Human-AI Collaboration in Cognitive Warfare: Enhancing Resilience Against Information Operations

Kurzfassung

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significant impact on the speed and accuracy of a broad range of systems. Enabling automated or autonomous workflows, AI bears the possibility to make existing applications more efficient and to design and fulfill entirely new tasks. Nevertheless, the integration of AI entails risks that give rise to calls for meaningful human control (MHC) of these systems. While the cooperation or collaboration between humans and AI is characterized through distinctive challenges, which involve both the capabilities of the human operator as well as the design of the AI system, this connection can tackle multiple ethical and safety-related concerns. In this paper, we orchestrate the concept of MHC and human-AI collaboration to fit the specific needs of countering information warfare. We investigate the role of AI in countering information warfare, specifically through the lens of a Disinformation Monitoring and Alert System (DMAS). We explore the challenges of fully autonomous systems in the domain of anticipating and countering disinformation, emphasizing the necessity of MHC to prevent adversarial manipulation. Thus, we argue that MHC is not limited to ensure safety and ethical governance, but can also make crucial contributions to the security of an AI system. By examining potential vulnerabilities and the advantages of human-AI collaboration, this paper aims to contribute to the strategic enhancement of disinformation defense mechanisms through MHC. While information warfare and disinformation campaigns are not exclusive to digital media or social networks, we focus our study on digital-based disinformation campaigns. These pose the greatest threat to NATO members in terms of both their number and their risk potential. In addition, this data-driven area is particularly suitable for AI-based applications for prevention.