Among a growing crowd of artificial intelligence applications, the military will likely be the earliest beneficiary. AI is improving quickly, and I see some real potential for its use in warfare. There are also civilian applications that could benefit from AI, such as finding patterns in large data sets and conducting predictive analytics. This article describes this emerging technology, one that could help make the world a better place and give warfighters an edge in evil days.
Computers are used in everything from cyber-defense to drone-based intelligence gathering and precision targeting. For military systems, AI will add more precision in a very inexpensive way, requiring much less human resources to execute even the most dangerous missions.
One of the broader military applications Involves the use of drone-based and aircraft-based sensors to gather and analyze massive amounts of information. For instance, Northrop Grumman Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) integrates information from sensors into a net-centric integrated fire control network that senses, identify and tracks hostile objects to defeat them. With data streaming in continuously from multiple sources, it might not be easy to make sense of all this information if not overwhelming for a human agent. With AI, interpreting the data becomes more straightforward, making the IBCS technology potentially more powerful.
With machine learning and artificial intelligence at our fingertips, even things like network traffic patterns or data-center power usage could ultimately get a lot of improvement.