Anna Nadibaidze, Ingvild Bode, Qiaochu Zhang
Center for War Studies
Sinopse: Reports from war zones underline that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly integrated into military decision-making. Armed forces are developing and employing AI-based systems as part of the complex and multi layered process of decision-making that relates to the use of force. Such uses of AI in security and warfare are associated with opportunities and challenges which deserve further scrutiny. To contribute to ongoing discussions on AI based decision support systems (AI DSS), this report provides a review of 1) the main developments in relation to AI DSS (at the time of writing in September 2024), focusing on specific examples of existing systems; and 2) the main debates about opportunities and challenges related to various uses of AI DSS, with a focus on issues of human-machine interaction in warfare.
While acknowledging that the development of AI DSS is a global, apparently persistent, and long-standing trend, the report focuses on mapping and analysing specific examples as part of three main, most recently reported, cases: the United States’ Project Maven, the Russia-Ukraine war (2022-), and the Israel-Hamas war (2023-). We treat these cases as indicative of possible uses of AI DSS, as well as representative of some of the varied opportunities and challenges associated with the integration of AI into military decision-making.
Potential opportunities of AI DSS include increased speed, scale, and efficiency of decision-making which might lead to strategic or humanitarian advantages in a battlefield context. With increased speed and scale, however, also come various risks and concerns around how humans interact with AI DSS in military decision-making on the use of force.
