MAGIC BULLETS: THE FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN WEAPON SYSTEMS
W
e live in an era of rapid technological advance- ment, in which yesterday’s pure fiction is today’s widely adopted consumer product. Such tech- nologies have created a highly interconnected
present. Tey portend an even more connected and automated future, in which the children who grew up asking Alexa why the sky is blue will be far more comfortable with artificial intel- ligence than we are today. And they bring with them a host of moral and ethical questions far more complex than any science fiction story.
Gaming out the effects of technology is notoriously difficult. Artificial intelligence (AI) already surrounds us in our devices, cars and homes. We accumulate capabilities and take them for granted as their benefits accrue. But now and again, it’s a good idea to stop and try to think about the potential for harm that comes with these technologies. To do that, we have to look at what we have, where it is and where it could go.
Weapons controlled by AI will appear on the battlefields of the future. Despite the protests (more on those in a moment), this is going to happen. Making a cheap, fully automated system that can detect, track and engage a human with lethal fires is trivial and can be done in a home garage with hobbyist-level skill. Tis isn’t science fiction. It’s fact. (Need more proof? Just watch the last episode of “Breaking Bad.”)
A variety of instructions, how-to videos and even off-the-shelf, trained AI software is readily available online that can be easily adapted to available weapons. Automated gun turrets used by hobbyists for paintball and airsoft guns have demonstrated the ability to hit more than 70 percent of moving targets.
To put that capability into perspective, the Army rifle qualifica- tion course requires a Soldier to hit only 58 percent of stationary targets to qualify as marksman on their weapon. Soldiers who hit 75 percent of stationary targets receive a sharpshooter qual- ification. It would only take some basic engineering, or enough tinkering, to build a heavier-duty turret with off-the-shelf soft- ware, a zoom camera and a fine control pan/tilt mechanism that holds a lethal firearm.
AI FOR DECISION-MAKING In the near term, AI is going to be used in military applications to aid decision-makers. Te automotive industry is already inte- grating AI into vehicles to analyze driving situations and provide augmented reality to drivers via heads-up displays that can help avoid accidents.
118 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2019
Such systems work by judging the deceleration of nearby vehicles, analyzing the context of roadway markings, or using additional sensors to enhance navigation in low-visibility fog. Automakers have even integrated fail-safe technology that can brake the car to avoid collisions if the driver fails to act. Tis same type of technology will be deployed by the military to aid Soldiers’ decision-making.
AI will be used to analyze the battlefield and provide augmented reality information to Soldiers via heads-up displays and weapon control systems. Such systems will be used to identify and classify threats, prioritize targets, and show the location of friendly troops and safe distances around them. Such systems will take information from multiple sensors across the battle- field to generate a picture based on information that Soldiers today would not even be aware of. Human Soldiers will still control the majority of military actions in the near term, but AI will provide easy-to-understand analysis and recommen- dations based on huge datasets that are too large for unaided humans to comprehend.
AI IS EVERYWHERE AI-based systems already permeate our daily lives. Te list of the world’s biggest companies is dominated by corporations that are built on or rely heavily on AI, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. Amazon recently released Rekognition, a tool for image and video analysis that anyone can add to a soft- ware application. In fact, police are using the facial recognition software already.
Te AI market was more than $21 billion in 2018, and it is expected to grow almost nine times larger by 2025. AI systems provide predictive analysis to interpret human inputs, determine what we most likely want, and then provide us with highly rele- vant information.
AI is no longer a technology reserved for a handful of multimillion-dollar fighter jets. Advances in hardware technol- ogy provide cheaper, smaller, more powerful processors that can be integrated affordably into individual Soldier equipment and fielded by the hundreds of thousands. Tese advances in hardware are what enable the “internet of things,” and what will become the internet of battlefield things.
Te U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center (CCDC) is developing smart weapon sights that can provide targeting information to aid riflemen and machine gunners. Soldiers will have an aiming display that
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