美军军费膨胀下，学术AI研究被包装成基础研究实则为军事服务。
Basic Research, Lethal Effects: Military AI Research Funding as Enlistment
- 用‘基础研究’名义包装军事项目，诱导学者参与战争技术开发。
- 2007至2023年资助文件显示，承认技术难题反成持续追加投入的借口。
- 适合关注科技伦理、军事与学术关系的研究者阅读。
在美军防务预算空前扩张的背景下，本文考察了国防部（DoD）对基于算法的作战技术学术研究的资助历史。分析2007至2023年间面向人工智能（AI）领域研究人员的资助公告，揭示所谓‘基础研究’资助如何实质上将学者纳入作战议程。第一部分批判性审视‘基础’与‘应用’研究的界限，指出名义上的基础研究仍具军事动员功能；第二部分历时性分析发现，‘小问题’表述——即肯定进展但强调未解决问题——成为持续投资的正当化理由；第三部分聚焦国防高级研究计划局（DARPA）AI战场应用资助提案，展现其战略目标。总体而言，资助公告成为军方与学术界共同设定研究议程的工具，‘基础研究’这一概念则遮蔽了研究者参与美国军事主义所引发的深层道德问题。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In the context of unprecedented U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) budgets, this paper examines the recent history of DoD funding for academic research in algorithmically based warfighting. We draw from a corpus of DoD grant solicitations from 2007 to 2023, focusing on those addressed to researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Considering the implications of DoD funding for academic research, the paper proceeds through three analytic sections. In the first, we offer a critical examination of the distinction between basic and applied research, showing how funding calls framed as basic research nonetheless enlist researchers in a war fighting agenda. In the second, we offer a diachronic analysis of the corpus, showing how a 'one small problem' caveat, in which affirmation of progress in military technologies is qualified by acknowledgement of outstanding problems, becomes justification for additional investments in research. We close with an analysis of DoD aspirations based on a subset of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant solicitations for the use of AI in battlefield applications. Taken together, we argue that grant solicitations work as a vehicle for the mutual enlistment of DoD funding agencies and the academic AI research community in setting research agendas. The trope of basic research in this context offers shelter from significant moral questions that military applications of one's research would raise, by obscuring the connections that implicate researchers in U.S. militarism.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品；中文卡片由大模型生成，请以原文为准。