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TAMPA, Florida — Writing an aircraft maintenance plan is far less sexy than Hollywood-like death machines or images of a dystopian future often associated with artificial intelligence and its rise in the US military.

But defense industry leaders say such relatively mundane missions are an excellent example of the tangible, everyday capabilities AI and machine learning can provide, highlighting how the evolving partnership between humans and machines can lead to a more effective, safer combat force. From predicting equipment failures in an F-16 before a U.S. special forces team takes apart a mountain of data to fix overhead video in real-time, the rapidly expanding role of AI in today’s military is often far less exciting than its own. critics suggest, but it’s more important than most people think.

Rather than shy away from a discussion about AI’s potential moral pitfalls and its myriad uses in warfare, industry insiders argue that ignoring the technology would be irresponsible, perhaps even immoral. right hands.

“These are usually 18, 19 year olds with months of experience and training. And they say, “Okay, operationally, your mission is to maintain this F-16.’ “I think it’s more ethical to enable them with tools to help them implement the appropriate solution, rather than have them guess what the problem is,” said Logan Jones, general manager and president of SparkCognition Government Systems, an AI-focused company. government and national defense sectors.

Mr. Jones spoke to the Washington Times during a recent US special operations meeting here; This is an event that brings together companies from around the world, including many with the latest in artificial intelligence and its military applications.

One of Spark’s AI products, the “digital maintenance advisor” currently used by the Air Force, can scan large volumes of data (including handwritten maintenance logs) to help identify problems and suggest solutions in much less time than a single human brain.

“You give someone a tablet and you help them triage better or get symptoms and make a suggestion as to what the problem might be – artificial intelligence is at the extreme. It helps them do their jobs,” said Mr Jones, before addressing the ethical debates about AI and what it should or shouldn’t do.

He argues that the sensational distracts from the truly useful in the AI ​​debate to date.

“If you look at the world of opportunities, a healthy debate is over a small fraction of use cases,” he said. “I think it’s taking away from the huge amount of value that is ready to go today. There is too much ordinary, low-hanging fruit in the military and national security sectors.”

Indeed, the focus of critics often shifts to so-called “killer robots” and existential debates about whether artificial intelligence can determine the value of human life, while in the depths of the Pentagon the focus is often on how machines can quickly skim through data, process reports. search job applications for the right candidates, sort audio and video files, and other routine tasks.

These tasks have become big business. This year, the Pentagon will reportedly spend as much as $874 million on AI initiatives, a figure that has grown dramatically over the past few years. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact amount of spending, as the Department of Defense and industry partners are involved in literally hundreds of AI-related programs, many of which remain highly confidential and whose details will not be made public.

Pentagon leaders seem arguably the most excited about AI’s potential to process, evaluate, and sort the massive amounts of information gathered from a variety of sources on and around the battlefield. For example, officials say there is now so much open-source or commercial satellite imagery and other information on the internet that it’s up to military units to review this data in real time, rather than relying solely on drone imagery collected by military personnel. , e.g.

The difficulty arises when trying to put all this information together and evaluate it in minutes or seconds.

“How do you combine this without overloading the operator… thus giving the operator a holistic level of confidence without having to do all the work”? James Smith, director of procurement at US Special Operations Command, told reporters during a question-and-answer session during last month’s Tampa convention.

“What AI can add to this very interesting problem – providing a very simple user interface for the operator to say, ‘Here’s a level of confidence in what you’re going to see in this terrain,'” he said.

man and machine

For skeptics, the rise of artificial intelligence and the potential enlistment of autonomous weapons raise serious moral questions and should encourage governments around the world to pass tough new laws to limit their use. For example, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots has been a leading international voice in the effort to get the US, UK and other major powers to restrict AI in the military.

“It’s time for government leaders to draw a legal and moral line against the killing of people by machines and to negotiate the new international law on autonomy in weapons systems,” Clare Conboy, the campaign’s media and communications manager, said in a recent statement. .

But industry leaders say that even at the cutting edge of today, it’s not a world where killer robots develop their own minds and take lives.

“Every day, every day, there will be a human in the loop,” Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of Shield AI, told The Times.

“I think a lot of people go straight to Hollywood and think ‘worst case scenario’. But there are many nuances in between,” he said. “There’s a lot of technology and engineering that goes into making a system secure.”

Mr. Tseng described his company’s portfolio as “self-driving technology for unmanned systems.” Shield AI said it specializes in unmanned systems that can operate without GPS using a program called “Hivemind.”

This technology allows military personnel to give the system its mission and then achieve the machine’s purpose. In other words, when searching a building for hostages, for example, there is no need for human hands on a joystick to control every movement of the machine, because the system can perform movements and make decisions on its own.

“You want to tell him what to do, and he needs to fulfill what that task is,” he said.

For example, when integrated into a fighter jet, Mr Tseng said the company’s AI technology could create a pilot with decades of flight experience in just a few days.

“They’re going to be incredible pilots who can do things that other people would never have dreamed of,” he said.

This type of technology may seem intimidating to some, but Mr Tseng and other advocates argue that AI-piloted aircraft can take more risks and perform more daring maneuvers than their human counterparts, without risking the life of a real pilot.

“This is where the battlefield is going,” said Mr. Tseng.

Beyond warfare, AI will also play a central role in ensuring the accuracy of data coming to military personnel’s screens.

Craig Brower, head of US government operations at visual intelligence technology company EdgyBees, said his firm aims to “make the world right” by engaging AI to help instantly correct raw video footage used by soldiers, firefighters, police or others on the frontline. lines.

Such satellite images may appear accurate to the naked eye, but “can be between 20 and 120 meters,” Mr Brower said. In the past, such corrections and verifications have been done by people in grueling, time-consuming work that could cost valuable time.

“What the technology actually does is, our AI machine learning is looking at this video feed as it comes in in real time and pinpointing checkpoints throughout that scene,” said Mr Brower in a talk just outside the Tampa convention center floor. . “And then it maps those control points to an image and elevation base.”

He said video fixes were “practically instantaneous”, which would be crucial during a military mission running on a tight schedule.