Public perceptions of military AI can lean toward the
apocalyptic — understandable when prominent figures like Elon Musk warn
us about the possible rise of Terminator-style artificial intelligence.
But when it comes to the judgements the military actually relies on,
things are a little more sober. As a recent report into the use of
military AI funded by the Department of Defense states: “To most
computer scientists, the claimed ‘existential threats’ posed by AI seem
at best uninformed.”
These fears “do not align with the most rapidly advancing
current research directions of AI as a field,” says the report, “but
rather spring from dire predictions about one small area of research
within AI, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).” The report goes on to
say that the current boom in artificial intelligence is not likely to
bring us much closer to the faraway dream of a true AGI. It notes: “AGI
has high visibility, disproportionate to its size or present level of
success.”
The document in question here is the product of JASON —
an advisory group of US scientists that briefs the government on science
and technology policy. Published earlier this month, it outlines
current trends in artificial intelligence and makes recommendations
about where the US military should invest and research.
Some of the findings it outlines can be a little dry
(e.g., “DoD should create and provide centralized resources for its
intramural and extramural researchers”) but, as pointed out by Motherboard,
reading between the lines produces some interesting insights into the
sort of thinking that might influence government
and military policy.
Starting with an overview of the field, the report states
that from 2010, the field of AI research was “jolted by the broad and
unforeseen successes” of multi-layer neural networks. This was
facilitated by the availability of large, labeled data sets (thanks
internet!) and hardware in the form of GPUs (thanks gamers!). This has
led to some big breakthroughs, says the report, but only in narrow
domains. The AI that can beat the best human players at Go will still
get thrashed by the average chess player.
Like some other notes within the report, this seems like a
distinction that’s both important and trifling. Elsewhere in the report
it lists autonomous military hardware currently in use around the
world, including the Samsung SGR-A1 sentry gun installed on the South
Korean border. The SGR-A1 is capable of asking humans for a password and
shooting them with either lethal or non-lethal rounds if it doesn’t
hear the correct answer.
In the next paragraph the report says that while this
demonstrates a certain amount of “autonomy,” it’s not autonomy as it
maps to the human experience (the “freedom of will or action”), but the
“prosaic ability” to act in accordance with a pre-defined set of complex
rules. To a person standing in front a machine gun that will kill them
if it can’t understand what they’re saying, the difference seems
trivial. The important thing is not the exact definition of autonomy,
but the fact that responsibility has been transferred from human to
machine.
At any rate, the report is scathing of the capability of AI to manage complex military systems in a sort of Skynet-style system. This would take the near-impossible — the creation of an artificial general
intelligence. Instead, it thinks AI will best serve to augment human
decision making. It gives the example of a convoy of military trucks
using self-driving software: “One might imagine convoys of trucks where
only the first truck has a driver and the others can use the driver’s
plans and all the trucks’ sensors.”
Whether or not the DoD will heed this report’s
recommendations isn’t clear. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of
American Scientists, told Motherboard: “JASON reports are
purely advisory. They do not set policy or determine DoD choices. On the
other hand, they are highly valued, very informative and often
influential. The reports are prepared only because DoD asks for them and
is prepared to pay for them.”
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