Artificial Intelligence (AI) can’t solve all problems, but the impact of AI is life-change. AI will be surely an area that changes the way we live. Also, AI will play a role in the military area. The Pentagon had already got serious about AI weapons. It’s no longer theoretical.
Project Maven is a disclosed Pentagon’s new AI for hunting terrorists. It will help the human analyst to identify objects on video footage taken on the battlefield by drones. It will identify the vehicle, building, terrorist in the footage, and give the suggestion box in the object. If it can’t identify the object in the footage, the analyst can tell it and it will know in the future footage. Algorism accuracy and performance will get better as more data is prepared. It is trained by using thousands of hours of battlefield video taken by drones. Since the different area has unequal environment and character, it will take five more days for a real-world deployment of the algorism.
This AI principle is similar as you upload photos in Facebook which help identify your friends. In the past, tagging object in the video is done by human analysts. Now AI helps tag objects like people, vehicles, and buildings, and give a suggestion of what’s those objects are. This technology will be available soon in existing U.S. drone like MQ-9 Reaper that having hyper resolution camera. [1]
The military will not have any hesitation to deploy AI in its system and develop AI weapons, because AI weapon can autonomously achieve the whole task of finding targets and eliminate them. AI weapon will not have emotion or judgment in the battlefield. They will be the ultimate “soldier”.
The idea of AI weapon is strongly opposed by many AI researchers and scientists. In 2015， more than 1000 experts sign an open letter warning of military AI arms race and calling for a ban on offensive AI weapons. [2] But Google and other tech company are seeking the AI cooperation chance with the military. Google aims to win larger Pentagon contracts of cloud solution and expand bigger potential government contracts. Google helped develop the technology in Project Maven. Google cloud platform and Google machine learning are deeply used in the project to enhance the system performance. When Google was reported involved in the Project Maven, it prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Google said it will not seek another contract for providing AI to the Pentagon for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires in 2019. [3] Since the security reasons, most of the Pentagon’s AI-associated work are still secrecies.
[1] The Pentagon’s New Artificial Intelligence Is Already Hunting Terrorists
[2] Musk, Wozniak and Hawking urge ban on warfare AI and autonomous weapons
[3] Google Plans Not to Renew Its Contract for Project Maven, a Controversial Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program