Done Improperly, Artificial Intelligence May Enhance the “Fog of War” Rather than Improve the Situational Awareness
For centuries, technology has been used to improve situational awareness, but the realisation has sometimes fallen short. The 1990s network-centric warfare initiative in the U.S. DoD developed operative situational awareness but neglected the tactical level, which exposed the military to micro-manage battlefield. Tactical Data Links have provided superior connectivity since the 1970s but a vast array of deployed datalinks have delayed the update of tactical communications and now there is a need for a wide leap from formatted messages to Internet Protocol data transfer. Computerisation of battle management has left the commanders with screens full of up-to-date, detailed information, but exposed to challenges in recognising the essentials from the amount of information. The development of technology introduces first time a cognitive-level companion to soldiers. Are they ready to trust artificial advice in stressful situations?
Figure 1: Evolution of Military Systems of systems
Recently, Artificial Intelligence technology (AI) has promised to bring visibility through the “fog on the battlefield”. There are four mistakes that the military should avoid in implementing Artificial Intelligence in this concern:
1. New technology makes soldiering harder for individuals, although it adds capability;
2. AI introduces a new kind of cognition on the battlefield;
3. Decision-making will be accelerated to machine speeds;
4. AI will introduce new ways for deception on the battlefield.
Let’s look at each of them more in detail.
1. AI Will Make Individual Soldiers’ Jobs Harder Even Though It Increases the Capability of the Force
In the beginning, just flying a fighter used to be an all-consuming task for pilots. Then digitalization introduced expert logic to make flying simpler but same time introduced more sensors and weapon systems. Then sensors, aerodynamic systems, and weapons were integrated, requiring automation to manage threat, target acquisition, and flying situations. Furthermore, systems become more complicated, including, e.g., guided weapons and electronic attacks in 5th-generation aircraft. The next (6th generation) fighter aircraft will be surrounded by several “autonomous air systems” (UAS) flying in formation alongside and the pilot needs to operate an even more complex swarm of platforms, sensors, and weapons. The complexity is beyond human control and needs AI enablement.
Figure 2: Wingman UAS aircraft concept
2. New Kind of Battlefield Cognition
Human understanding or cognition has been the ultimate decision-maker in previous wars. We spend long hours in general staff college to learn to understand the battle and study different analytical methods to make the best decisions. The implementation of AI technology in command and control introduces an “alien cognition”. AI has gone through a different military education. It does not necessarily follow human morale or values. The AI considers statistical correlations, calculates a long chain of probabilities, and optimizes through large decision trees. All of these are intuitively impossible for human cognition. The future battlefield requires social cognition and AI cognition to communicate and understand each other and thereby work together in human-machine teams better than individually. Commanders need to be educated in dealing with complex issues within human-machine relationships and build intuition to recognise when a human understanding is subordinate to machine cognition.
Figure 2: New mixture of cognition on the battlefield
3. Human-speed vs Machine-speed
The pace of warfighting has increased throughout the history of war. The decision cycle (OODA) is getting shorter, and situations are more ambiguous and stressful. Ethical implementation of Artificial Intelligence requires humans in the OODA loop to ensure compliance with Laws of War and Rules of Engagement. All good when the situation unfolds at the pace of human understanding. But when hypersonic weapons are guided by artificial intelligence or an approaching fighter is piloted by AI optimized in a dog fight, slowly reacting humans in the loop will end with more casualties. Left in autonomous mode, the AI may conclude the situation totally against the mission of the operation and end up slaughtering innocent by-passers. On the other hand, current military risk-avoiding cultures are already keeping their defensive systems in auto-mode. The probability of this behaviour does not decline with more semi-automated systems on the battlefield.
Figure 4: Intelligent hypersonic weapons change the pace of combat
4. Deception at Machine-speed
Information operations (INFO-OPS) are a significant part of contemporary military operations. INFO-OPS requires a massive amount of data that only Artificial Intelligence may make sense. Artificial Intelligence will command the information impact on individual behaviour at higher sophistication, scale, and lower cost than anytime before. It is already challenging for humans to recognise deep fake videos (manipulated real-time videos) from real ones. On the other hand, AI-enabled sensors are doing the primary image recognition in the machine-speed battlefield. Currently, people are playing with autonomous cars and taping traffic signs to appear different from the autonomous vehicles. The cyber, electromagnetic, and physical realms open a variety of attack vectors to mislead your machine or human sensors.
Figure 5: Earlier deception of intelligence analysts does not affect the Artificial Intelligence
Conclusion
In summary, AI deployment, just like new technology, may lead to mistakes and fatalities in military affairs. Nevertheless, the promise of military effects and impacts in adversary systems drives the development and fielding of AI-enabled sensors, effectors, and integrators. Soldiers need to be trained to understand the new artificial cognition, communicate with it, train it, recognise its strengths and weaknesses, and work together with it to win more fights than the adversary. The future battlefield requires officers with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills more than ever before.
Sources:
https://warontherocks.com/2020/03/fog-friction-and-thinking-machines/
https://www.popsci.com/future-air-force-fighters-leading-drone-swarms/
https://www.popsci.com/china-drone-swarms/
No comments:
Post a Comment