Attack Robots, Terminators, Autonomous Weapons - Future of AI
No Terminators Coming .... Yet Out of Loop" Defensive AI Could Save Lives
KRIS OSBORN, WARRIOR MAVEN - CENTER FOR MILITARY MODERNIZATIONSEP 18, 2023
By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
In an interesting interview recently on CNN, former President Barack Obama was asked about the future of AI and the various philosophical, technological and ethic variables now dominating discussion as AI-technology explodes and many consider its implications. While being clear to emphasize that AI continues to bring paradigm-changing innovations to the world, he used succinct language to sum up what is perhaps the most significant complication or challenge when it comes to the application of AI .... "Machines can't feel joy," he told CNN.
Obama said this in the context of describing how the advent and rapid arrival of new applications of AI continue to change things rapidly bringing seemingly limitless new promise and also introducing challenges and complexities. He was quick to praise the merits of AI in his discussion with CNN, but also mentioned the challenges or limitations, given that uniquely human attributes such as emotion, devotion and other more subjective phenomena can't be approximated by machines. True enough, and while defense industry innovators and critical Pentagon institutions such as the Air Force Research laboratory are making progress exploring ways AI can somehow estimate, calculate or analyze more subjective phenomena, there are clearly many variables unique to human cognition, intuition, psychological nuances, ethics, consciousness and emotion which it seems mathematically-generated algorithms simply could not replicate or even begin to truly approximate accurately. This is why leading weapons developers are quick to explain that any optimal path forward involves a blending or combination involving what could be called the Pentagon's favorite term .. "manned-unmanned teaming."
This, however, does not mean the merits and possibilities of AI should be under-estimated, as senior researchers with the Army Research Laboratory have explained that "we are at the tip of the iceberg" in terms of what AI can truly accomplish. This is why the Pentagon is measuring the rapid success and promise of AI in the context of non-lethal defensive force. The combination of human decision-making faculties, when coupled with the speed and analytical power of high-speed AI-generated computing, is already creating paradigm-changing innovations. Imagine how many lives a defense AI-weapons system could save? AI is also already massively shortening the sensor-to-shooter curve in key modern warfare experiments such as the Army's Project Convergence.
https://warriormaven.com/global-security/attack-robots-terminators-autonomous-weapons-future-of-ai
