From Black Box to Watchtower: Governing AI in the Age of Conflict
From Black Box to Watchtower: Governing AI in the Age of Conflict
https://unu.edu/article/black-box-watchtower-governing-ai-age-conflict
Publish Date: 2026-04-30 22:46:00
Source Domain: unu.edu
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AI Transparency Crisis: The article highlights the issue of AI systems operating as “black boxes” in conflict assessment, generating probabilities without accountability or intelligible explanations.
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Algorithmic Superstition: AI’s lack of transparency fosters decision-making based on uninterrogated outputs, leading to potential catastrophic miscalculations due to unchallenged assumptions and misread signals.
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Legible Uncertainty with Rough Sets and Fuzzy Logic: The article advocates for Rough Set Theory and fuzzy logic frameworks which preserve ambiguity, provide zones of certainty and uncertainty, and represent gradations of truth instead of rigid classifications.
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Governed Rationality: It emphasizes the need to govern AI’s expansion of rationality through transparency, traceability, and human oversight, ensuring explainability and alignment with ethical and legal standards.
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Multilateral Responsibility: The article calls for multilateral institutions to establish norms for responsible AI use in security, facilitate data sharing, and reduce technological asymmetries for collective security benefits.
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Hybrid Systems: Effective early warning systems should combine high-performance predictive models with interpretable systems like Rough Sets and fuzzy logic to balance risk identification and explainability.
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Trust and Accountability: The article argues that trust between AI systems and decision-makers is crucial in conflict prevention, and AI should support transparency and responsibility in predicting and explaining conflict likelihoods.
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Legible Language of Peace: The ultimate goal of AI in conflict management is not to eliminate all uncertainty but to make it understandable, contestable, and accountable, fostering precision, nuance, and responsible action.
