Oddly, not everyone is very enthusiastic about North Korean AI development

By their own admission, the development of artificial intelligence could present existential risks to humanity, justifying their regulation in the democratic countries from which they come.

So obviously, the possibility of such tools ending up in the hands of authoritarian regimes is, at the very least, very worrying. Especially since it is not a possibility, but already a proven fact in countries like Iran, China or Russia. And if North Korea is not really at the forefront on the issue, and the very strong sanctions against it do not help the development of new technologies, the regime of Kim Jong Un is not decided to leave a potentially terrifying technology to escape him. Obviously, on the Seoul side, we are watching this development with concern.

Development delayed by sanctions, but not stopped

Hyuk Kim, a researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, recently published a study on North Korea’s access to and use of artificial intelligence. For him, it is undeniable that the sanctions against the country, initially to prevent it from accessing nuclear weapons, have thereby slowed down its access to technologies using artificial intelligence. But it is now clear that the authoritarian regime now has more or less advanced access to both.

For Hyuk Kim, this was made possible in particular by the collaboration between scientists from the country and foreigners, particularly from its historic ally: China. This use of AI by North Korea is not just a theory: the regime’s official press has reported it on the one hand and, although it is true that one can doubt the assertions made there are held, the secret services of the neighbor and rival to the South have also spotted the use of AI by hackers in the country to try to find security vulnerabilities. They said they were monitoring the situation closely, but when you’re part of South Korea’s secret service, when do you monitor another country?

The Pyongyang regime is already using AI in many areas

If North Korea is not really at the cutting edge of modernity in all areas, it must be recognized that its interest in AI is not recent. Probably inspired by China’s big neighbor, an institute dedicated to its study and development emerged in the country no later than 2013 and since then, different products using artificial intelligence have been adopted by the regime. And as always with this authoritarian regime, the uses concerned are slightly chilling.

AI would thus have been used by Pyongyang as part of the response to the COVID-19 epidemic, to ensure that the wearing of masks was respected. But the technology would also, inevitably, be used to control the population in the broader sense, but also to ensure the security of the country’s nuclear installations, or to carry out simulations of armed conflict and to organize cyberattacks. Obviously, in Seoul, nothing very exciting about that.

Source : Reuters