Artificial Intelligence is not only advancing in spaces of illustrations, videos or texts: in war it is also doing it. The Pentagon, Defense Department Mindful of the speed of innovation, the United States updated its automated weapons directive for the first time in more than a decade.
Its objective: to guide the development of new defense and attack systems.
Michael Horowitz, head of the Pentagon’s Emerging Capabilities Policy, presented the Autonomy in Weapons Systems, the updated directive.
Advances in weapons and Artificial Intelligence
From 2012, the year of publication of the last guide on Artificial Intelligence, to 2023, there were many findings in the field.
The evolution of the drone system, the use of automatic weapons and the development of weapons that can disable enemy drones are an important part of what has been achieved in the last decade, and many of these advances have been witnessed in the War in Ukraine.
Let us remember that the United States and the European powers have supplied the government of Volodimir Zelenski with weapons, in the defense of Ukraine against the Russian attack, which began on February 24, 2022.
The production of weapons with Artificial Intelligence seeks to improve and continue to obtain increasingly better alternatives.
“The directive does not prohibit the development of any particular weapon system: it sets the requirements for autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems,” Horowitz noted.
Human judgment is maintained when using AI weapons
One of the most important things is “the dramatic and expanded vision of the role of Artificial Intelligence in future military operations,” added the executive.
One thing, however, Pentagon insiders are clear: Commanders and operators must exercise proper humane judgment about the use of force. Information gathering and execution is left to arms, but the order comes from a person.
“The directive does not change the approval requirements,” Horowitz stresses. “You still have high-level reviewers, who are finally making the call on these systems. What the autonomous weapons task force does is facilitate the aggregation of the information that senior leaders would need to be able to make effective decisions.”