If you ever questioned yourself how advanced artificial intelligence (AI) can get, then you might get a shock to know that the US military (Pentagon) is working on an experimental AI network that is supposed to identify the likely future events that deserve attention. This sounds similar to the 2002 Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Minority Report, in which law enforcement uses mutated humans with psychic abilities to catch criminals before they actually do the crime and ‘Skynet’ from Terminator movies.
Pentagon is supposedly combining data with machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence to gain enough of an informational edge to enable the proactive approach. The series of tests is called the Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), in which data from a huge variety of sources, including satellite imagery, intelligence reports, sensors in the field, radar, and more are collected. This third set of GIDE testing is completed, and a fourth is planned further.
The first GIDE test was done in December of 2020 where AI-enabled early warning alerts of peer-level threat movements were prototyped. In March 2021, the GIDE-2 was conducted which used AI and machine learning to use the information to respond to real-life scenarios, like to predict the next plan of the enemy.
With help of Cloud computing, the vast amount of data collected worldwide can be processed efficiently which could be accessed by military officials and agencies who need them. In a press briefing, last week US Air Force General Glen D. VanHerck said,
“GIDE, the Global Information Dominance Experiments, embodies a fundamental change in how we use information and data to increase decision space for leaders from the tactical level to the strategic level – not only military leaders but [it] also allows our civilian leaders.”
The idea is to predict other nation’s moves before which could help in discourage and precautions can be taken previously to avoid mishappening.
Artificial Intelligence can figure out the preparations which are being made for a submarine to leave port, making it obvious that it’s on its way out to sea and is expected to help using machine learning to spot and collate all this information much more quickly than human operatives can. AI can also be beneficial if it senses increased activity in a car park or military base, it can flag this to other parts of the system, where it’s then analyzed as part of a massive data set.
In context to Artificial Intelligence, VanHerck said that the data exists and added,
“What we’re doing is making that data available, making that data available and shared into a cloud where machine learning and artificial intelligence look at it. And they process it quickly and provide it to decision-makers, which I call decision superiority.
This gives us days of advanced warning and the ability to react. Where, in the past, we may not have put eyes on with an analyst of a GEOINT satellite image, now we are doing that within minutes or near real-time”.
It is clearly seen that the US isn’t giving too much information about how exactly these new AI systems work, how they process the information they’re gathering and how the result is data processed in a quicker time.
The AI experiments sound to be in the initial stage presently but people are being arrested for crimes before they’ve been committed and officials are framing them as a form of supercharged information gathering, rather than ways to see into the future.
VanHerck mentioned that humans are still making all the decisions based on the data that the machine-learning systems produce and the Artificial Intelligence which is under development will likely end up de-escalating situations.
VanHerck also said,
“The ability to see days in advance creates decision space and Decision space for me as an operational commander to potentially posture forces to create deterrence options to provide that to the secretary or even the President.”