Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Defense

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on everybody’s minds these days. Most of the world’s leading companies are making massive investments in it. Governments are scrambling to catch up. Every single one of us who uses Google Search or any of the new digital assistants on our smartphones has witnessed first-hand how quickly these developments now go. Many analysts foresee truly disruptive changes in education, employment, health, knowledge generation, mobility, etc. But what will AI mean for defense and security? In a new study HCSS offers a unique perspective on this question. Most studies to date quickly jump from AI to autonomous (mostly weapon) systems. They anticipate future armed forces that mostly resemble today’s armed forces, engaging in fairly similar types of activities with a still primarily industrial-kinetic capability bundle that would increasingly be AI-augmented. The authors of this study argue that AI may have a far more transformational impact on defense and security whereby new incarnations of ‘armed force’ start doing different things in novel ways. The report sketches a much broader option space within which defense and security organizations (DSOs) may wish to invest in successive generations of AI technologies. It suggests that some of the most promising investment opportunities to start generating the sustainable security effects that our polities, societies and economies expect may lie in in the realms of prevention and resilience. Also in those areas any large-scale application of AI will have to result from a preliminary open-minded (on all sides) public debate on its legal, ethical and privacy implications. The authors submit, however, that such a debate would be more fruitful than the current heated discussions about ‘killer drones’ or robots. Finally, the study suggests that the advent of artificial super-intelligence (i.e. AI that is superior across the board to human intelligence), which many experts now put firmly within the longer-term planning horizons of our DSOs, presents us with unprecedented risks but also opportunities that we have to start to explore. The report contains an overview of the role that ‘intelligence’ - the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world - has played in defense and security throughout human history; a primer on AI (what it is, where it comes from and where it stands today - in both civilian and military contexts); a discussion of the broad option space for DSOs it opens up; 12 illustrative use cases across that option space; and a set of recommendations for - especially - small- and medium sized defense and security organizations.

Artificial intelligence and the future of warfare sketches a clear and sobering picture of the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the digitized battlefield, broadening our understanding of critical questions facing decisions-makers today.

An in-depth assessment of innovations in military information technology informs hypothetical outcomes for artificial intelligence adaptations In the coming decades, artificial intelligence (AI) could revolutionize the way humans wage war. The military organizations that best innovate and adapt to this AI revolution will likely gain significant advantages over their rivals. To this end, great powers such as the United States, China, and Russia are already investing in novel sensing, reasoning, and learning technologies that will alter how militaries plan and fight. The resulting transformation could fundamentally change the character of war. In Information in War, Benjamin Jensen, Christopher Whyte, and Scott Cuomo provide a deeper understanding of the AI revolution by exploring the relationship between information, organizational dynamics, and military power. The authors analyze how militaries adjust to new information communication technology historically to identify opportunities, risks, and obstacles that will almost certainly confront modern defense organizations as they pursue AI pathways to the future. Information in War builds on these historical cases to frame four alternative future scenarios exploring what the AI revolution could look like in the US military by 2040.

This book examines the military characteristics and potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the new global revolution in military affairs. Offering an original perspective on the utilization, imagination, and politics of AI in the context of military development and weapons regulation, the work provides a comprehensive response to the question of how we might reflect on the AI revolution in warfare and what can be said about the ways in which this has been handled. In the first part of the book, AI is accommodated, both theoretically and empirically, in the strategic context of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The book offers a novel understanding of autonomous weapons as multi-layered composite systems, pointing to a complex, non-linear interplay between evolutionary and revolutionary dynamics. In the second section, the book provides an impartial analysis of the related politics and operations of power, whereby increases in military budgets and R&D of the great powers are met and countered by advocacy networks and scientists campaigning for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. As such, it moves beyond popular caricatures of ‘killer robots’ and points out some of the problems which result from over-reliance on such imagery. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, critical security studies, arms control and disarmament, science and technology studies and general International Relations.

Progress in artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, and robotics allow new capabilities that will affect military strategies assertively. The implications of these developments will be felt across the array of military criteria from knowledge, surveillance, and identification to balances of offense and defense, as well as to the nuclear weapons programs themselves. In this suite, five top AI experts and their potential applications within autonomous weapons and monitoring systems are the points of discussions about the moral and realistic challenges of handling the worldwide eruption in military AI research and development. The intention: to maintain fast progress in machine learning from triggering a global arms race in the backdrop of AI poses a new existential threat to humanity. As the US, China, and Russia accelerate its use of artificial intelligence in military contexts, Europe fears falling behind unless the continent's policymakers take measures to combine their initiatives. Future concepts, models, algorithms, data sharing, access to elastic computing power, and sophisticated testing and training are suggested to create a data mobility framework.

Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations brings a much-needed perspective on the impact of the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in military affairs. Experts forecast that AI will shape future military operations in ways that will revolutionize warfare.

An international and interdisciplinary perspective on the adoption and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in defence and military innovation by major and middle powers. Advancements in AI and ML pose pressing questions related to evolving conceptions of military power, compliance with international humanitarian law, peace promotion, strategic stability, arms control, future operational environments, and technology races. To navigate the breadth of this AI and international security agenda, the contributors to this book include experts on AI, technology governance, and defence innovation to assess military AI strategic perspectives from major and middle AI powers alike. These include views of how the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, the European Union, and Russia see AI/ML as a technology with the potential to reshape military affairs and power structures in the broader international system. This diverse set of views aims to help elucidate key similarities and differences between AI powers in the evolving strategic context. A valuable read for scholars of security studies, public policy, and STS studies with an interest in the impacts of AI and ML technologies.