July 20, 2024

How AI is changing warfare

By: Jacob Stokes

It is unclear whether the PLA has the tech talent to create world-class systems, he points out, and its centralised decision-making might impede AI decision-support. Many Chinese experts are also worried about “untrustworthy” AI. “The PLA possesses plenty of lethal military power,” notes Jacob Stokes of CNAS, another think-tank, “but right now none of it appears to have meaningful levels of autonomy enabled by AI”.

China’s apparent sluggishness is part of a broader pattern. Some, like Kenneth Payne of King’s College London, think AI will transform not just the conduct of war, but its essential nature. “This fused machine-human intelligence would herald a genuinely new era of decision-making in war,” he predicts. “Perhaps the most revolutionary change since the discovery of writing, several thousand years ago.” But even as such claims grow more plausible, the transformation remains stubbornly distant in many respects.

Read the full story from The Economist.

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