October 31, 2018

Pentagon Doesn’t Want Real Artificial Intelligence In War, Former Official Says

Featuring Robert O. Work

Source: Defense One

Journalist Aaron Boyd

The term “artificial intelligence” gets thrown around a lot today, especially in government circles, where leaders are eager to get ahead of the technological curve. But the military, at least, doesn’t really want true AI, according to a former deputy defense secretary.

“We are not talking about Skynets and we’re not talking about Terminators. Those are what you would call an artificial general intelligence-type weapon,” Bob Work, who served as deputy defense secretary under Presidents Obama and Trump, said Tuesday during a speech at the annual SAP NS2 Solutions Summit. “We’re looking for narrow AI systems that can compose courses of action to accomplish the tasks that the machine is given and it can choose among the courses of action.”

Work made a hard distinction between general AI and more narrow forms—what he preferred to call machine intelligence and algorithmic warfare.

Read the full article and more in Defense One.

Authors

  • Robert O. Work

    Senior Counselor for Defense and Distinguished Senior Fellow for Defense and National Security

    Secretary Robert O. Work is the Distinguished Senior Fellow for Defense and National Security at the Center for a New American Security and the owner of TeamWork, LLC, which s...