Britain’s top military Artificial Intelligence chief has issued a warning to the Government over giving the Armed Forces the tools they need to keep the country safe.
“As our adversaries increasingly employ these technologies, so must we,” said Air Commodore David Rowland, Chief of the Artificial Defense Center.
And he added: “We face an epoch of unprecedented change. While humans cannot be everywhere, technology can.”
His comments follow the conclusion of an unprecedented military exercise between the UK, US and Australia which tested the use of AI drone swarms – thought to be able to deter China from invading Taiwan.
Under the US’s Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms program, they will be launched to target enemy air defenses, artillery and command centers.
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Linked together by a laser mesh data-sharing network, drone swarms can work alongside manned stealth aircraft, autonomously extending the aircraft’s information range.
They could also “flood” enemy radars and free it to fire missiles at unmanned targets. They can even work out the best angle of attack
The system has already proven successful in US simulations in the Taiwan Strait, and it is hoped they will help deter China from carrying out an invasion of the island.
Writing in the MoD’s Decider magazine, Air Commodore Rowland said: “The benefits of AI technologies are vast.
“As it develops, the potential increases for cyber and AI to intersect to better detect threats.”
The UK ranks second after Singapore in AI research, and third – behind the US and China – in developing AI technologies.
But Beijing is expected to be a world leader by 2030.
Air Commodore Rowland warned: “To maintain our competitive advantage, we must foster best practice collaboration cohesion, responsible behavior and threat mitigation.
“Success will require strong relationships between operational, research and analytical efforts as part of an integrated UK road map.
“Upskilling our people is a foundational step in this journey.”
But there is mounting alarm expressed by some AI pioneers, who fear the technology is going to fast to be safely controlled.
Last week AI “godfather” Prof Yoshua Bengio said militaries should not be given access to the technology at all.
He said: “It might be military, it might be terrorists, it might be somebody very angry, psychotic.
“And so if it’s easy to program these AI systems to ask them to do something very bad, this could be very dangerous.”