Capability of AI
Capability of AI
Capability of AI
the
nature of warfare. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a reality in today's world which is considered as
the fourth industrial revolution especially in the military. The significance of AI has been put to the fore
by world top leaders including Obama, Trump, Xi, and Putin, Putin who stated on September 2017:
whoever becomes the leader in AI, will rule the world.
In fact the world military power is compelled by the need for change as it is on the continuous pursuit of
better, faster and stronger weapons or technologies, and this is exactly what AI provides. In the field of
military, [ CITATION alP \l 1033 ]Stated by Peter Svenmarck, in recent years AI has been taken as all
domains i.e. land, sea, air, space and information and all levels of warfare i.e. political strategic,
operational and tactical. Currently, the use of AI in the military is seen on mainly in terms of the
following:
a) Autonomous Weapons and Weapons Targeting
b) Surveillance
c) Cyber security
d) Internal Security
e) Logistics
f) Autonomous Vehicles
Some experts consider it as a positive development as it would replace human on war and reduce human
casualties, AI reaches where human cannot reach and bring out with best results including the high risk
ones. After recognizing the aptitudes of AI, more than 20 countries have announced their national AI
strategies, and more states and non-states organization are taking pivotal steps in AI research and
development (R&D). Yet United States and China are leading actors in the field where the US aiming to
remain the hegemon in the battlefield, while China is aiming to leapfrog the US and become the leader in
AI by 2030.
Since 1956 AI has been developing, but it came into reality late after 2010 due to three enabling
developments, the availability of "big data" sources, improvements to machine learning approaches, and
increases in computer processing power. Generally there are two types of AI, Narrow AI (NAI)and the
General AI (GAI), while NAI refers to functions like playing games or image recognitions, GAI is used to
denote systems capable of human level intelligence which are sufficient to conduct a series of different
tasks. An important issue related to AI, regardless of whether it is narrow or general, is that of the
autonomy.
AI military applications
Currently, in the military application we can observe the first two machine-human relations case, i.e.
drones and precision guided missiles, while the development has not yet reached the third level of full
autonomy. [ CITATION Ken18 \l 1033 ]It is widely accepted now, that in the future, AI has the capacity to
transform military activities such as logistics, intelligence, surveillance and especially weapons design.
There are verities of uncertainties that encircle AI and its use which has raised a lot of debates among
military strategists which are related to the impact of AI on the way in which warfare is conducted and
how much autonomy should be given to the weapons that are going to use AI. Particularly with regard to
the lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) or "Killer robots" as they are dubbed. These systems
fall within the third case mentioned earlier, where the human is out of the loop.
In terms of military application, AI can be used but not limited to be as follows[ CITATION Fry18 \l 1033 ]:
(i) based on the image-recognition algorithms, AI can be used to assist in processing and interpreting
information. For example, the American Project Maven that is being programmed to process and interpret
the information received from the videos captured by drones. (ii) By using AI, drones, planes, ships,
thanks, etc. will not need a human to control or direct their actions. For example, Israeli Harpy drone that
has passed to a close to full autonomy (still needs to be launched by ground troops), Air force Global
Hawk and Army Gray Eagle drones. For all it is necessary that the operator directs the aircrafts where to
go and then the aircraft flies itself. (iii) Lastly, as algorithms develop further, AI used for command and
control, including battle management, by analyzing large sets of data and making forecasts to direct
human action.
Conclusion
The capability of AI to alter the landscape of security and change the recent balance of power is apparent
and accepted by both states/bureaucrats and academicians. For this cause, the rise in the growth of AI,
and its application in the military, has been accompanied by a competition between states, most
remarkably the U.S. and China. Many other states/organizations at the same time are trying not to lag
behind and advance their own AI applications.
References
al, P. S. (n.d.). Possibilities and challenges for Artificial Intelligence in Military Applications. Retrieved
from http://www.sto.nato.int/publications/ .../STO-MP-IST-160/MP-IST-160-S1-5.pdf.
Payne, K. (2018). Atificial Intelligence: ARevolution in Strategic Affairs? Survival: Global Politics and
Strategy 60.
Scharre. (n.d.). Army of None, Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War.