Project Maven Brings AI To the Fight Against ISIS (thebulletin.org)

Dog of the South writes: When the Pentagon -- famous for its painful procurement process and its penchant for producing tech systems that are obsolete before they're fielded -- decided to develop and deploy artificial intelligence to a combat zone within just six months, the idea sounded like a failure waiting to happen. Remarkably, Project Maven has met its goals and won rave reviews -- and may have changed the Pentagon's whole approach to tech innovation. But is the Defense Department ready for the enormous challenges that lie at the intersection of military power and artificial intelligence?
The project "focuses on analysis of full-motion video data from tactical aerial drone platforms," according to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , which reports that the Pentagon has already spent "tens of billions of dollars" developing them.

"A single drone with these sensors produces many terabytes of data every day. Before AI was incorporated into analysis of this data, it took a team of analysts working 24 hours a day to exploit only a fraction of one drone's sensor data."

Comments

It's not the Pentagon

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

It's the Federal Rules of Procurement. They're designed for buying either large bulk purchases of commodity items or securing expensive contracts like a new fighter or tanks. Computer-related work outside of embedded systems is almost always too agile, even under a more waterfall release schedule, for the extremely brittle and rigid law.

Sharing ?

[Big Bipper]

This technology sounds like something the NSA might like to borrow. Or perhaps the quick roll out indicates that it was existing technology that was borrowed from the NSA.

Nobody is ready

[OpenSourced]

But is the Defense Department ready for the enormous challenges that lie at the intersection of military power and artificial intelligence?

Nobody is ready. The paradigm change is even bigger than the one generated by the introduction of air power and armored vehicles. Nobody can predict exactly which best practices will in the end be revealed as the most effective. Will politicians be unable to put a feet on the streets because swarms of flying robotic explosive cockroaches guided by AI will attack them with lethal intentions? Will the whole human army have to be disbanded like outdated crossbow soldiers, or will a mixed force be most effective?

Those questions and many others will depend on the pace of advancement of technology and economics. But I fear that we are ready for living in interesting times.

The fight against the Islamic State is all but won

[Nova Express]

The fight against the Islamic State is largely won, thanks to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the Iraqi government (plus various militias), and Assad's Syrian government. Raqqa, Deir Ez-Zor and Mosul have all been liberated from the Islamic State, and what little territory remains is split into shrinking, isolated enclaves.

The Islamic State may live on for a while yet as an international terrorist organization like Al-Qaeda, especially since so many worldwide jihadi terrorist groups have pledged allegiance to it, but without territory it lacks one of the prerequisites to be regarded as a "legitimate" caliphate by Muslims worldwide, which makes it considerably less dangerous and less likely to inspire acts of jihad in the future.