A Discourse Study Of The U.S. Congressional Hearing Testimonies On Militarization Of Artificial Intelligence

In recent years,major countries in the world have been actively formulating policies to develop artificial intelligence technology and its militarized applications.As a world power of science and technology,the United States is also vigorously advancing the militarization of artificial intelligence,which has aroused heated discussions from all walks of life in the country at congressional hearings.Employing corpus linguistics,discourse network tools,text mining,co-word analysis,and other methods,this study aims to study the discourse of congressional hearings on the issue of the militarization of artificial intelligence and tries to answer the following research questions:1)Who are the main actor groups in the hearings on the militarization of artificial intelligence? What claims do they have?2)What are the interrelations between different actor groups and claims?3)What are the key arguments within each major claim? How are they organized?The research can be generally divided into three parts.First,through corpus collection and sorting,this study has built a corpus containing 923 statements and related information.Based on the corpus,this study identified 7 actor groups and 10 main claims and conducted a diachronic analysis of claims.Secondly,with the help of the discourse network,an affiliation network was produced to explain the complex relationship between groups and claims.Finally,through text mining technology and keyword co-occurrence network,this article analyzes the 10 main claims one by one and determines the key arguments,as well as the logical relationships between them.The study found that discussions on AI militarization in the US Congress began in 2015.With the wave of international AI development,it has experienced rapid growth and decline.The number of participants has continued to increase,and various opinions have been enriched over time.The rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has shown great potential for military applications,and major countries in the world are actively developing AI and are exploring military applications.They have attracted great attention from the US political elite and stimulated the US government,military,and various interests.The military actively started discussions on the militarization of artificial intelligence,and China’s competition is a key factor in external influences.The military,as a direct stakeholder in the militarization of artificial intelligence,has been the most active.Think tanks have formed an alliance of opinions with the military at the hearing,and have maintained consensus on many major issues,and most of their active speakers have held opinions.The Cold War mentality advocated the China threat theory and proactively set up the issue of competition among countries.As active followers,the Democrats and Republicans have maintained the same views on the rare issue of artificial intelligence,while government departments,scientists,and corporate departments reacted relatively coldly on the topic of military applications of artificial intelligence.The discussion at the hearing was more unified in terms of vigorously developing AI and militarized applications of AI,that is,paying close attention to external threats,positively appraising the value of artificial intelligence and its great role in promoting the military,and proposing to increase government support,expand technical cooperation,and Although there are still some objections and concerns about the proposal to speed up military applications,the voices of opposition are constantly weakening.The discourse analysis of the hearings tells us: first,the US Congress’ s discussion of the militarization of artificial intelligence has a great relationship with the external environment.Congress is more concerned about always maintaining the leadership of the United States,in exchange for more political economic and military influence interests.Second,the discussion has been affected by the game between China and the United States.The United States regards China as the main competitor in the field of artificial intelligence,and China’s normal technological development as a threat,reflecting the Cold War thinking.Third,the discourse directly related to the military application of AI are scattered,involving many basic terms and few specific applications,indicating that the United States’ understanding of militarization of AI is still in its infancy,so it’s highly possible that we will hear more about it in the future hearings.