Can Warfighters Remain the Masters of AI?
Harrison Schramm and Jeff Kline
February 6, 2020
Special Series - AI and National Security
The Department of Defense is engaging in a dangerous experiment: It is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) equipment and technologies while simultaneously underinvesting in preparation for the workforce will need to understand its implementation. In a previous article, Michael Horowitz and Lauren Kahn called this an “AI literacy gap.†America’s AI workforce, in uniform or out, is not prepared to use this fast-advancing area of technology. Are we educating the masters of artificial intelligence, or are we training its servants?
The U.S. government as a whole, and by extension the military services in particular, are flush with “AI mania.†One could be forgiven for thinking that dominance in AI is today’s preeminent military competition. It is certainly true that advances in technology — including AI — will be drivers of national success in the future. However, we are currently in the “boost phase†of excitement about AI. From our perspective as cutting-edge practitioners and educators in the field of statistics as applied to military problems, it is almost certain that the expectation for AI in the mid-term will not be completely met. This interplay between inflated expectations, technical realities, and eventual productive systems is reflected in the business world as well and is described as part of the Gartner “Hype Cycleâ€.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/02/can-warfighters-remain-the-masters-of-ai/
