I believe the department of defense made the conclusion back in 2014 or 2015 that AI-enabled autonomy was the key to future warfighting and it would be the key to providing the joint force with the advantage it needs to prevail on future battlefields.
The Chinese believe that also. The director of the central military science and technology commission said AI is going to accelerate the process of military transformation ultimately leading to a profound revolution in military affairs. He goes on to say the combination of artificial intelligence and human intelligence can achieve the optimum which the Chinese refer to as human machine hybrid intelligence. They consider this to be the highest form of intelligence and they believe that the side that gets to there that figures that out will have the decision-making advantage in future warfare.
It’s important for us to try to figure out, okay, do we agree with them? Is it going to be a human machine hybrid or what?
Now, in this regard I really like chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov and what he’s been writing about since he was defeated by IMB’s deep blue computer in 1997. He has thought a lot about human machine teaming in interactive contests of strategy attack and defense. He’s played humans alone, grand masters. He’s played computers alone and he’s played human machine collaborative teams. He has concluded after all of the games he’s played that weak humans plus machines with better processes are superior to both strong computers alone and strong humans plus machines with inferior processes.
There’s a lot packed into that conclusion. The US constantly, I think, says look — one of our primary advantages is we have the strong humans. In a future clash — because of our operational experience and the Chinese really don’t have that operational experience — that will be a huge advantage. But what Kasparov has concluded is look, people without that operational experience with machines with better processes will defeat the strong humans if their machines have inferior processes. In this case, processes are algorithms throughout the force.
That was an excellent bit from former DepSecDef and NSCAI Vice Char Bob Work on the Hudson webinar, Implementing Decision Centric Warfare and the future of joint command and control.
It’s my understanding that more recently, AI systems simply outperform human-machine teams in chess. But chess is an incredibly constrained space compared to the open-endedness of war, and so I think Bob Work’s conclusion will stand for war for the foreseeable future.
This idea should be frightening — that inferior Chinese warfighters can outclass Americans so long as their AI-enabled machine processes are superior. It means that creative and rigorous experimentation with the new technologies is key. The US cannot rest on the ISR strike complex it currently uses to prosecute wars.
After the Desert Storm, Commanding general Schwarzkopf of Desert Storm allegedly said that the outcome with Iraq would have been the same even if the sides switched combat systems. That means American troops were simply better trained, and that was the decisive factor — not GPS enabled smart bombs, etc. I think the people advantage will last for some years, but if China can better integrate networks of systems and AI-enabled decision-making, then the tables could quickly turn.
Leave a Reply