A new piece of legislation is being discussed by US lawmakers that pushes for collaboration on artificial intelligence amongst the highly secretive Five Eyes alliance.

The intelligence group, made up of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, was formed after World War II to share sensitive information.

Republican US Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin has now introduced a bill proposing an inter-agency AI working group between the different countries.

Dr Reuben Steff, a senior lecturer on international relations and global security at the University of Waikato, told Newsable we’re at a period of real uncertainty, and it’s unclear how far along other countries are with artificial intelligence.

“You could have a bunch of guys and girls in a bunker playing around with software, AI, drawing upon vast amounts of data”, he said.

“Now, if you’re Joe Biden in Washington, DC or Christopher Luxon in Wellington, you may not have a very good way to gauge, how good are the AI capabilities of this or that country relative to us?”

Steff said AI is already being used in “incremental ways” for security and defence purposes around the world.

“If you can think of something, AI will have an application to improve it, to enhance it, to gather data, to then inform decision makers or soldiers on the battlefield.

What we are now concerned about is what happens when you go to the next level?”, he said.

“You might have commanders or lieutenants or what have you, who are the conductors. But all the battle bots, so to speak, we humans, soldiers, are not that prevalent any more on the field.”

“That’s a leap from where we are, but it’s entirely conceivable at this stage, it’s entirely plausible.”

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