Artificial Intelligence is Gaining Experience in Military Engagement

Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of Warfare?

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More killer drones are not the answer to conflict.

Hey Guys,

This content is borderline NSFW, as I don't agree with all the Ukraine posting. But still I believe it's a story that needs to be told. Have a good weekend!

A War of Killer Drones

On March 30th, 2022 the U.S. included 100 killer drones called Switchblades in an arms package to Ukraine. While this may have saved Kyiv, it likely?escalated the brutality?of the war with Russia and their recent admission that they want the south of Ukraine as well.

So far in FY2022, the U.S. DoD has provided $300 million in security assistance to Ukraine under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). In FY 2021, Ukraine received $275 million under DoD's Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). This included $75 million in lethal assistance.

President Biden on March 16th, 2022 announced an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine to $1 billion in just the past week, and a?total of $2 billion?since the start of the Biden Administration.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine appears to be a test for many A.I. technologies related to warfare. Recently, in late April, 2022 a powerful Russian drone with AI capabilities was spotted in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine has employed the use of a controversial facial recognition technology.

Ukraine uses Clearview AI to ID Russians and the dead, March, 2022.

A War of Facial Recognition

The U.S.’s help of Ukraine in the War also has normalized facial recognition technologies in warfare to a permanent degree. According to the Washington Post,?Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow's invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date.

The Ukraine is also using?A.I. to sift though Russian commutations ?systems and to listen in on the chatter. In mid March it was revealed by Reuters that Ukraine has started using Clearview AI’s facial recognition during war. Clearview pulled all of our social media pictures to train their facial recognition database. They are able to identify dead soldiers to establish an ID.

Now the U.S. is also sending more classified drones to the Ukraine.

You can read the original article with proper formatting and visuals here.

The U.S. is essentially using the Ukraine battle of the East as a test pilot for their most classified drones and killer drones. You will remember that companies like Google with?Project Maven helped optimize ?the killer drones with machine learning to be able to aim better. As you can see, there is a clear pattern of A.I. being more and increasingly implicated in human conflict, like the warfare we are witnessing in Ukraine in early 2022.

The incarnation of AI is motivating global powers to prepare themselves to control and maneuver advanced technologies.?Superiority of artificial intelligence is the new paradigm?of power?between superpowers and especially as augmenting soldiers, improving military tactics, weaponized in surveillance, reconnaissance and cybersecurity. Less geopolitical stability between the western axis of the U.S. and NATO vs. Russia, China and others in the East suggests that the A.I.-arms race is in full flight mode. At any point it could move to fight mode.

Crypto Warfare

Amid sanctions against Russia, there’s even a crypto warfare going on in a bizarre twist. U.S. officials are concerned Russia will “monetize its natural resources” for power-intensive crypto mining to evade sanctions.

Think about it, Russia is the world’s third-biggest bitcoin mining hub, according to Cambridge University data. This too is how war looks like in 2022:

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Ukraine isn’t just the victim of an unlawful invasion into its territory and disrupting it completely in 2022, it’s a test ground for new forms of A.I. on the battlefield and we as a species should take the risks of this seriously. A.I. is on the front lines of the war in Ukraine, in ways we probably don’t know yet.

A world in conflict is one where A.I. is being weaponized against people and soldiers. A world where better technology leads to more efficient killing. This can never be fully justified.

Mykhailo Fedorov

There is no glory in using A.I. to kill your strategic rivals. We don’t fully know what the U.S. “Phoenix Ghost” drones can do. But we are about to find out as the conflict will escalate this May, 2022.

The additional $800 million aid package for Ukraine announced by President Biden will include a new drone system designed by the US Air Force called the "Phoenix Ghost." I am afraid this is only the beginning of what A.I. will make capable in terms of warfare and augmenting a nation’s military capabilities.

A New Kind of Warfare - One of A.I. and Stealth Technologies

War is terrible. But it has often played a pivotal role in advancing technology and how we approach the battlefield in a new decade. If the U.S. is helping the Ukraine, it’s not clear what is preventing China from aiding its geopolitical partnership with Russia. In terms of cyberattack capabilities, it is highly likely China already has helped its allies.

Less has been said about the use of artificial intelligence in the Ukraine war than, say, anti-tank missiles, but the Pentagon is quietly using AI and machine-learning tools to analyze vast amounts of data, generate useful battlefield intelligence, and learn about Russian tactics and strategy, a senior Defense Department official has admitted. It’s now clear how pervasive A.I. has become in the war and is perhaps one of the main reasons that the Ukraine has fared better than expected in the abrupt invasion that has shocked and gripped the world and is without precedent in the amount of A.I. involved at this scale.

I want to point this out, in case anyone hasn’t realized, that?A.I. is at the center of this war?and the side that uses it better will likely stand the most to gain. This sets a dangerous message to the Chinese and the U.S. Pentagon, the obviousness of how pivotal using artificial intelligence in conflict zones and skirmishes and military confrontations is today and from now in the 21st century where geopolitical discord could be on the rise.

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” ― Douglas Adams

In a big boost to the Ukrainian military, the US is giving Kyiv a secretive new drone called?Phoenix Ghost ?tactical unmanned aerial systems. Phoenix Ghost is a low-cost, single-use suicide drone that is designed to hit multiple targets.

The Master Variable of A.I. Supremacy

Civil society groups and A.I. researchers have been increasingly alarmed in recent years about the advent of lethal autonomous weapons systems—A.I.-enabled weapons with the ability to select targets?and kill people without human oversight but drones built by integrated machine learning systems are now a vital element in how successful a defense can be for Ukraine. American A.I. is embedded in killing machines, and this is only the beginning.

Modern warfare in essence is more complex, on account of an increasing number of micro variables. Change in any one variable could create an exponential impact on battle outcomes – and even on the war itself. What is AI in Military? Could A.I. itself evolve to become the “master variable” of all future warfare and geopolitical tensions? I believe this is highly likely and is one of the main reasons China has prioritized it to such an extent.

It’s not by accident that I named this Newsletter “A.I. Supremacy”. One of the main reasons antitrust regulation hasn’t gone after Google, Microsoft, Amazon and their BigTech monopolies is the U.S. Government believes these companies are pivotal to the future of our National Security against a quickly evolving China.

They have looked the other way so U.S. corporations could develop better Cloud technologies and cybersecurity defense. So they could continue to develop A.I. technologies that would enable the U.S. to keep up with China, for just a few more decades or more likely, just a few more years.

At the time, the “trade war” between the U.S. and China was fully underway. The U.S. initiated bans of Chinese drones for government agencies under the American Drone Security Act of 2019. That didn’t change the dominance of DJI (China) in the sector.

We are fooling ourselves if we think by even potentially sanctioning China that it will halt their economic and covert advantages in A.I. technologies. China and its technology companies are the process of going global, just like American ones did all those years ago. The cold-tech war is just beginning and China has been preparing for it for the last 20 years.

The U.S. and Canada agreeing to send even more weapons to Ukraine is an ominous sign that this war is going to escalate badly. The longer it goes on the more it incentivizes the commercialization of A.I. technologies implicated in warfare and military conflict zones. War is profitable for the military-industrial complex and many firms have been waiting for such an opportunity.

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A.I. Could Lead to Millions of Deaths in the Next Fifty Years

Meanwhile, the development of autonomous weapons has continued at a quickening pace. Right now, those weapons are still in their infancy. We won’t see humanitarian groups’ worst nightmares about swarms of “slaughterbot” drones realized in the Ukraine conflict. But weapons with some degree of autonomy are likely to be deployed by both sides. The ability of A.I. to do the job of killing becomes much more tempting. Until “smart machines that kill” also becomes normalized in the world.

This is not an application of A.I. we should tolerate or consider lightly. Because if we do, we enter a world where there is no turning back. Where any rogue regime can create a bioweapon with A.I. or a pandemic or a swarm of new kinds of killer drones to achieve their ends or eliminate their real or perceived rivals. We are entering a period of human history where the probability of mass casualty events due to A.I. become exponentially more probable.

We simply aren’t considering the risks of allowing such things to occur with so little regulation and oversight of the evaluations of the dangers of new technologies and what should be outlawed and banned. We are too easily moved by the plight of others to consider what our inventions could usher upon the world, where each day we may be slipping into a dystopia of pandemics, climate change, wealth inequality and A.I. warfare. The risks are becoming too great and the lack of human leadership is troubling and omnipresent.

I am very troubled by the current course of events where A.I. is militarized in this manner. It sets terrible precedent of the military weaponization of machine learning at the service of rogue states, historical territorial disputes, dictators and global empires who do not want to lose their place or who want to usurp the current world order.

Politics and biased governments should never allow technology to put humanity as a whole in danger.?A militarized A.I. becomes an existential risk to mass extinction of a far greater magnitude and a far more urgent danger than even climate change.?We are approaching a tipping point of A.I’s accelerating role in warfare and the results could be catastrophic.

To challenge the supremacy of the United States and for overall development of military-AI technologies,?Chinese policymakers released ?their 10th defense white paper, China’s National Defense in the New Era Roadmap, outlining the complete AI-ecosystem for the Chinese Army. That was in 2015. A lot has changed since 2015 and China will continue to evolve faster in its economic growth and R&D into its military and artificial intelligence in the decades ahead than the United States can realistically be expected to achieve.

What do you think?

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If you enjoy articles about A.I. at the intersection of breaking news join AiSupremacy?here . I cannot continue to write without community support. (follow the link below).

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