It would be surprising if the technological capabilities of AI were not used in the military sphere. According to the influential British publication The Economist, AI is changing every aspect of war.. Unfortunately, Ukraine is testing this on itself today.
Researchers in the AI \u200b\u200barms markets list ten military uses: autonomous weapons systems, surveillance and reconnaissance, target recognition and classification, threat analysis and forecasting, logistics and supply chain management, cybersecurity protection, electronic warfare, simulation and training, medical.
The problem of using AI in the military sphere encourages states to come up with common solutions to regulate the norms of “soft” international law. The Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Military Summit (REAIM 2023), which took place on 15 and 16 February 2023 in The Hague, adopted a Political Declaration on the Responsible Use of AI and Autonomy for Military Purposes, aimed at building international consensus on responsible behavior and government. As of February 12, the declaration was supported by 54 states, in particular the G7 countries and Ukraine.
Let's continue the study of the experience of leading countries in the use of AI, which we started earlier.
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USA.
The Department of Defense's first AI Strategy was developed in 2018 and released in February 2019 (updated in 2020). The strategy covered topics such as strategic objectives, strategic approach and strategic directions, and was focused on improving the effectiveness of modern AI capabilities.
The US Department of Defense did not ignore the training of the military, having prepared a Strategy for training military personnel in relevant areas of AI. Its main goal is to “accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence capabilities at scale.”.
And on February 2, 2022, the Ministry of Defense announced the Software Modernization Strategy. The reason for its development was very simple: “To create a more lethal force, we need the ability to develop faster and be more adaptive than our opponents.”.
In March 2023, the United States adopted the National Cyber \u200b\u200bSecurity Strategy. Here is what her text said about the reasons for the adoption: “The governments of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other autocratic states with revisionist intentions are aggressively using advanced cyber capabilities to achieve goals that are contrary to our interests and generally accepted international norms.”.
On February 21, 2024, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks spoke on "
The report identifies the most important factors prompting the US Department of Defense to pay extraordinary attention to the development of AI. The first factor is the need to apply this technology, which provides “an even greater advantage in decision-making than the United States has today, given the challenge facing us from the People's Republic of China.”.
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The second factor is the scale of management. Kathleen Hicks compared the US Department of Defense to \; healthcare system serving more than 9 million military personnel, retirees and family members; and assets worldwide spread across 25 million acres, approximately the size of the state of Kentucky. The value of DoD assets worldwide is higher than those of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Walmart combined." That's why we need to use data and AI to be "
Four different digital, AI and analytics teams were merged into the DoD as early as 2022 under the leadership of the Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), responsible for accelerating the adoption of data, analytics and AI in the DoD. The directorate was created by merging the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and the former Defense Digital Services (DDS).
CDAO's key mission is to regulate and scale the common use of AI-enabled tools, including performance analytics to measure progress in implementing the National Defense Strategy, a common operational picture for combatant commanders from the operational to the strategic level through the Advancing Data and AI (ADA) initiative, and.
On November 14, 2023, CDAO released the Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAI) Toolkit, which is a key outcome of the US Department of Defense's RAI S\u0026I Pathway, signed in June 2022..
The RAI S\u0026I Pathway outlines 64 efforts to advance ethical AI within the Department of Defense, including developing technical tools and guidance to help its personnel design, develop, deploy, and responsibly use AI systems..
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Great Britain.
In the UK - as in all other cases - government decisions on the military use of AI are based on the principle of good governance. The system of strategic and regulatory documents is built in a strict hierarchy and based on the results of consultations with representative government bodies, experts who have real successful many years of experience in implementing projects in the relevant field. Document preparation procedures are carried out as transparently as possible for the public.
In particular, within the framework of the national strategic order and strategy, one “comprehensive” level document has been adopted, two on digitalization issues and one on AI. The Ministry of Defense approved four “comprehensive” level documents, nine on digitalization and one on AI. And finally, the British Army Command approved two documents at the “comprehensive” level, one on digitalization and one on AI.
Thus, in October 2023, taking into account precisely this structure, the British Army published a strategic document entitled “The British Army's Approach to Artificial Intelligence. A Guide to Accelerating the Implementation of Artificial Intelligence in the Army and the Training of Army Artificial Intelligence,” which outlined how the Army plans to become “AI Ready” by April 2024.
This document accompanies the September 2020 Integrated Operating Concept, the 2021 Defense Digital Strategy and the Defense Data Strategy, the June 2022 Defense Artificial Intelligence Strategy and sets out the practical implementation of the Army Digital Information and Data Plan 2023-2025, released in April. In addition to skills, ethics and internal leadership and data management, the strategy covers the Army's involvement in the private sector.
To implement AI programs in the UK defense sector, the Ministry of Defense Artificial Intelligence Center was created in 2021, working closely with three other departments. Among them, the Defense Digital organization stands out, responsible for transferring effective digital and information technologies to the military.. DD has an annual budget of over ?2 billion and a team of approximately 2,400 staff, including military, civil servants and contractors, and operates under the Digital Defense Strategy. Defense Equipment and Support (DE\u0026S) was established as an independent MOD body in 2014 with unique management powers delegated by HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office. The unit operates in the face of four major strategic challenges: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the rise of China's economic, military and technological power, digital warfare and climate change. The Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is an executive agency of the Ministry of Defense that provides world-class expertise and delivers cutting-edge science and technology for the benefit of the nation and allies.
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And one more piece of fresh news that may be of interest to some people’s deputies in the Verkhovna Rada. On December 14, 2023, the British Parliament's Defense Committee created a subcommittee on AI in the field of defense, which, in particular, deals with the following issues:.
How clearly has the MoD prioritized the AI \u200b\u200bcapabilities and expertise it wants the UK defense sector to have, what priorities it has identified and whether they can be achieved?
What strengths and experience does the UK industry currently have in AI with defense applications
How can the UK Government better develop the capability and expertise of domestic industry in sectors such as engineering and software to support the development and delivery of AI applications in defense?
What can the government do to help include UK AI companies in defense supply chains both at home and abroad?
The UK Parliament has already thoroughly examined some of these issues..
China.
Both the United States and Great Britain consider the growing economic, political and military influence of China to be the most threatening trend for global security.. This also applies to the development of China’s capabilities in the use of AI in the military sphere..
Fact: China has attended and signed two non-binding legal documents adopted at major international summits: the Political Declaration on the Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy for Military Purposes (Netherlands, 2023) and the Bletchley Declaration agreed upon at the AI \u200b\u200bSecurity Summit in.
From the conclusions of Institute for the Study of War expert Matt McInnis in the study “Russia and China: A Look at the Future of War”: “China’s military modernization efforts are aimed at achieving dominance in decision-making through a three-pronged approach: doctrinal transformation and ideological rigidity; using advanced technologies to shape the nature of modern conflicts; innovative training methods to compensate for the lack of combat experience during the war"
In addition, existing information about high-level contacts between China and Russia as early as February 2024 on cooperation in the development of AI in the military sphere raises even greater concerns.
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A report by Chinese researchers Fei Su and Jingdong Yuan working in Europe, “Chinese “Thinking on Artificial Intelligence Integration and Interoperability with Nuclear Command and Control, Force Structure and Decision Making,” reports that China has released two key position papers on AI in recent years. The researchers' key findings regarding these two documents are as follows:.
Given the accelerating pace of China's integration of AI into military systems, it is unlikely that China will propose any regulation that would limit the development of military AI;
The documents outline opposition to the use of AI to undermine China's sovereignty and territorial security. This is the red line in China's position on the use of AI;
The importance of human intervention in weapons systems is emphasized - AI should always be under the control of people.
Taking into account the peculiarities of management methods at the state level, it can be argued that the danger of China’s ambitions in the use of AI in the military sphere is quite real.
In our opinion, it is also important to pay special attention to the increased interest in the use of AI in the military sphere in states such as Iran and North Korea. Russia, which has been using elements of AI in its war with Ukraine since 2022, announced in the same year the creation of an AI unit in the Department of Innovative Development of the Ministry of Defense. Trends in Russia's use of AI in the military sphere are rapidly accelerating.
Ukraine.
Ukraine, at the level of individual projects, both collaborating with leading companies in the world and using its own developments, is extremely actively using AI tools during combat operations against the Russian army.
As Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov says, “Today we are a kind of testing ground for the use of artificial intelligence. It is actively used to recognize and decipher satellite images, recognize targets on the battlefield, develop target acquisition technologies for drones, recognize faces, and predict the means that can be used to hit certain targets.”.
Discussing the issue of regulation of AI in the defense sector, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation for the Development of the IT Sphere Alexander Bornyakov notes that during a full-scale war, regulation of AI in projects that relate to military needs is not expected. As a sensitive comment, we draw your attention to the fact that government regulation “to limit” is only one of the tools of government. In those countries where the principle of “good governance” operates, government regulation is used primarily “to encourage” and forward-looking strategic and tactical planning.
Of course, if there is such a desire.