13/05/2018 Duelling Algorithms: Using Artificial Intelligence in Warfighting – OTH https://othjournal.com/2018/04/25/duelling-algorithms-using-artificial-intelligence-in-warfighting/ 1/3 Feature Duelling Algorithms: Using Artiﾒcial Intelligence in Warﾒghting  April 25, 2018  1 Comment Examining the dichotomy of AI employment in warfare-“Do things better?” or “Do better things?”-and other implementation challenges. Estimated Time to Read: 7 minutes By Peter Layton Technological change is relentless. Fifth generation warfare is only just emerging but already commercial technology developments are pushing us in new directions. Artiﾒcial intelligence (AI) has arrived as a new disruptive force although its impact and its usefulness to warﾒghting is unclear. To help address that question, I recently wrote a paper for the Royal Australian Air Force. Importantly, this paper tries to stay practically focused on the application of emerging intelligent machine technologies to warﾒghting. Fictional books and movies remain fascinated by notions of robot soldiers, often ﾒghting some ﾒnal battle against the human race. Such technologies though remain distant and the form in which they may emerge – if at all – is very uncertain. With warﾒghting being a practical profession, this paper accordingly sticks to more mundane non-ﾒction matters in thinking about the here-and-now. However, while Terminator cyborgs and Cyberdyne’s Skynet are imaginary, today’s smart-phone and internet search engines already use intelligent machine technologies. The Chinese Government’s Skynet intelligent surveillance system is operational and Project Maven will deliver its AI-powered analysis system to the USAF later this year. Intelligent machines have arrived. Algorithmic warfare is very real. The paper’s ‘Algorithmic Warfare’ title derives from Project Maven but it is much broader than that project or indeed AI itself. When we use AI, we are generally actually thinking of an amalgam of various technologies including ‘big data’ and ‘the cloud’ that when integrated give us machines with particular capabilities. These technologies are emerging from the commercial world and proliferating widely, as the AI in your smart phone will tell you if asked. Given this, the key diﾗerentiator in determining combat performance between future intelligent machines used for warﾒghting tasks appears likely to be the algorithms each incorporates and how it has been trained. Algorithms are the sequence of instructions and rules that machines use to solve problems. They transform inputs to outputs and as such are the crucial conceptual and technical foundation stone of modern information technology and the new intelligent machines. Algorithms may also become the conceptual and technical foundation stone of future warﾒghting – and hence the title. Algorithmic warfare then is not a discrete new technology such as directed energy or hypersonics. Instead, the concept’s technologies will have a broad, all-pervasive eﾗect, progressively becoming omnipresent across warﾒghting. Such smart machines though do have distinct limitations that need to be understood and which can be exploited. POSTS  ABOUT  SUBMISSIONS CONTACT