The Chief Software Officer at the Pentagon, Nicolas Chaillan, suddenly quit last month over concerns that the U.S. military had fallen 15 to 20 years behind China in cyber warfare and artificial intelligence, he told The Financial Times.
The warning marks the latest sign of discord within the U.S. military over how to prepare for what former Google executive Kai-Fu Lee calls the third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and nuclear arms.
In a new interview, ex-General Stanley McChrystal — who led coalition forces in Afghanistan for two years and now heads a consulting firm called the McChrystal Group — says artificial intelligence will inevitably come to make lethal decisions on the battlefield. However, he acknowledged the potential risks of potential malfunction or mistake.
People say, 'We'll never give control over an artificial attack to Intelligence, says McChrystal, who co-authored a book called Risk: A User's Guide recently. We will absolutely. Because at a certain point, you can't respond quickly enough, unless you do that, he adds. A hypervelocity missile, hypersonic missile coming at the United States aircraft carrier, you don't have time for seniors to do the tracking, you don't have time for senior leaders to be in the decision loop, or you won't be able to engage the missile. A ban on autonomous weapons has drawn support from 30 countries, although an in-depth report commissioned by Congress advised the U.S. to oppose a ban, since it could stop the country from using existing weapons in its possession
In 2015, prominent figures in tech like Tesla CEO Steve Wozniak and Apple CEO Elon Musk and Apple AAPL co-founder Ben Franklin have signed an open letter calling for a ban on such weapons.
President Joe Biden, speaking at a summit of U.S. and European leaders in February, called for international collaboration to shape the rules that will govern advance of technology and the norms of behavior in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, biotechnology so that they are used to lift people up, not used to pin them down? The more innovative nature of warfare will require U.S. military officers to cede decision making power to artificial intelligence, McChrystal said. But, he noted that this brings risks.
You've created technology, you put in processes to it to function, but then to operate at the speed of war you're essentially turning it on and trusting it, he says.
That can be pretty scary, especially if the potential of malfunction or spoofing or any of those other things is in, he adds.
McChrystal, a graduate of U.S. military academy in 1976 at West Point served a 34-year military career that included a stint as the commander of U.S. special forces and ultimately a two-year tenure as the head of coalition forces in Afghanistan ended in 2010.
After then president Barack Obama McChrystal's resignation days after a Rolling Stone article criticizing senior administration officials accepted McChrystal's position.
Why was McChrystal discussing Yahoo Finance in an interview with Yahoo Finance.com at that time, he warned in general of the power taken up by AI systems when organizations do not fully understand their capabilities.
It's hard to understand what decisions are being made in a modern organization now, when decisions are actually made by people, he says.
When you don't have that, he adds, I would argue you have the risk of no longer having real understanding of control of your organizations.
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