Military Documents Reveal How the US Army Plans To Deploy AI In Future Wars (thenextweb.com)

In a just-released white paper, the Army describes how it's working to make a battlefield network of machines and humans a reality. The Next Web reports: "Most of such intelligent things will not be too dissimilar from the systems we see on today's battlefield, such as unattended ground sensors, guided missiles (especially the fire-and-forget variety) and of course the unmanned aerial systems (UAVs)," reads the paper. "They will likely include physical robots ranging from very small size (such as an insect-scale mobile sensors) to large vehicle that can carry troops and supplies. Some will fly, others will crawl or walk or ride."

The paper was authored by the Army's chief of the Network Science Division of the Army Research Laboratory, Dr. Alexander Kott. It outlines the need to develop systems to augment both machines and people in the real world with artificially intelligent agents to defend the network: "In addition to physical intelligent things, the battlefield -- or at least the cyber domain of the battlefield -- will be populated with disembodied, cyber robots. These will reside within various computers and networks, and will move and acts in the cyberspace."

Kott takes pains to underscore the fact that the AI powering U.S. war efforts will need to be resilient in ways that today's AI simply isn't. He states: "The intelligent things will have to constantly think about an intelligent adversary that strategizes to deceive and defeat them. Without this adversarial intelligence, the battle things will not survive long enough to be useful." Ultimately, aside from outlining what the future battlefield will look like, the paper's conclusion is either disappointing or a giant relief, depending on your agenda: "Clearly, it is far beyond the current state of AI to operate intelligently in such an environments and with such demands. In particular, Machine Learning -- an area that has seen a dramatic progress in the last decade -- must experience major advances in order to become relevant to the real battlefield."

Comments

Re:The absurdity of claming to be an atheist

[Sulik]

"What orators lack in depth they make up for in length." -- Charles de Montesquieu

It's just science fiction

[phantomfive]

In other words, the paper is just science fiction, trying to guess the future. Current capabilities are not enough.

Re: It's just science fiction

[BlueStrat]

These things are going to have mechanical CPUs, are they? Because if they have electronics the EMP will likely fry them too.

Just use vacuum-tubes. They're pretty much immune to EMP. :)

Seriously though, protection from EMP is pretty standard stuff. It's not that hard. Pretty much all military electronics from missile guidance packages to fighter-jet avionics to infantry field radios have EMP mitigation built into the design.

In the real world EMP doesn't work like in The Matrix.

In the example of a nuclear/thermonuclear bomb detonating, the effective radius (close enough that EMP could disable minimally-hardened electronics) of the EMP pulse is much smaller than the effective full-destruction radius of the detonation.

In other words, you'd almost certainly need to be close enough to ground-zero so that the blast itself would incinerate the electronics to hot radioactive plasma before the EMP would be strong enough to kill it.

What are truly vulnerable are electrical power grids and civilian radio/cellphone/satellite/cable-TV comm/broadcast systems that lack any serious EMP mitigation.

Strat

Translation

[b0s0z0ku]

Translation: how to better use technology to end human lives and mutilate fellow humans instead of improving human lives. It's unfortunate that a lot of new technology is first used to murder and maim.

Re:Translation

[hcs_$reboot]

Yes, let stop designing high level weapons. We can be reassured, Russia and China will also stop working on that right away (btw, motorbikes might also be used to carry people, and not frighten them by gangs of riders doing lots of noise ;-)

Re:Translation

[Nidi62]

Translation: how to better use technology to end human lives and mutilate fellow humans instead of improving human lives. It's unfortunate that a lot of new technology is first used to murder and maim.

One of the first uses I see for "AI" (which in this implementation isn't even true, "real" AI) is for semi-autonomous heavy load-bearing equipment. Think back to 2001: US special forces operating in Afghanistan had to use mules to help them move equipment over mountainous terrain. Imagine a 4 or 6 legged robot that can follow a patrol and carry supplies, ammunition, wounded soldiers, etc. With 6 legs and an articulated front segment it should be able to go over just about any terrain a person could reasonably go. Boston Dynamics has tried a few things but the technology is not quite there yet. Also, they seem to keep focusing on making them look like dogs or horses while I picture something more like an armored pickup with legs, with the "cab" holding the computers, sensors, batteries, etc and a bed in the back for the cargo. Of course, it's the military, so if it's big enough you can mount a manned machine gun/Mk 19 grenade launcher on top and you have instant LAV/gun truck support where normally a wheeled vehicle couldn't go.

Use AI, how about just I ?

[Archfeld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I am more worried about how the Army employs basic intelligence than I am what they will do with artificial intelligence...

Re:EMP EMP

[djinn6]

You have a poor understanding of EMP if you think it can take out a 10-foot wide UAV. Commercial jets run into EMP all the time when they get hit by lightning and nothing happens to them.

As for blinding them, yes, it might have an effect on radio or radar, but the current crop of UAVs have visible light cameras. Meanwhile, whoever's fighting them will lose radio too, so it's not really an advantage.

Re:Exporting American jobs

[PopeRatzo]

but we lack Little Techie programs across the USA.

That's not true. I was at a high school in a relatively poor neighborhood recently, and they had a maker space with a 3d printer and water cutter and all kinds of cool shit that I didn't recognize. There were a bunch of kids that might have otherwise been out slinging dope or gangbanging and they were doing their maker space thing and a bunch of kids were working on some raspberry Pi projects and when these kids graduate they're going to be coming for your job. I'm told that there are programs like this all over the country (or at least in states that value education).

Don't worry about the kids. The current crop of young'ns is more capable, more poised and better educated than any of us were. Despite the fact that they've been failed by the generations before them being unable to make anything like thoughtful decisions about the future, they're getting ready to take over whether you're ready to step aside or not. They're not afraid to put themselves out there and they're not afraid to get their hands dirty.

It's not like training your dog

[petes_PoV]

the AI powering U.S. war efforts will need to be resilient in ways that today's AI simply isn't

The crucial point about AI is the training they need. Unless the americans have been collecting data for decades (given how few armed conflicts there are and that each one is different from the one before) there won't be any realistic scenarios for the AIs to learn from.

It would also be quite easy to defeat AIs that had been trained - just do the unexpected, as all gifted military leaders do.

Although once they get past the initial phase of monumentally screwing up everything they touch - another facet of "superpower" military might - they could easily develop new strategies. The best strategy would be for the AIs to decide that the battle isn't worth fighting.