Researchers say AI models like GPT4 are prone to “sudden” escalations as the U.S. military explores their use for warfare.

  • Researchers ran international conflict simulations with five different AIs and found that they tended to escalate war, sometimes out of nowhere, and even use nuclear weapons.
  • The AIs were large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base, which are being explored by the U.S. military and defense contractors for decision-making.
  • The researchers invented fake countries with different military levels, concerns, and histories and asked the AIs to act as their leaders.
  • The AIs showed signs of sudden and hard-to-predict escalations, arms-race dynamics, and worrying justifications for violent actions.
  • The study casts doubt on the rush to deploy LLMs in the military and diplomatic domains, and calls for more research on their risks and limitations.