The U.S. military, algorithmic warfare, and big tech

We learned this week that the Department of Defense is using facial recognition at scale, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he believes China is selling lethal autonomous drones. Amid all that, you may have missed Joint AI Center (JAIC) director Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan -- who is charged by the Pentagon with modernizing and guiding artificial intelligence directives -- talking about a future of algorithmic warfare. Algorithmic warfare, which could dramatically change warfare as we know it, is built on the assumption that combat actions will happen faster than humans' ability to make decisions. Shanahan says algorithmic warfare would thus require some reliance on AI systems, though he stresses a need to implement rigorous testing and evaluation before using AI in the field to ensure it doesn't "take on a life of its own, so to speak." "We are going to be shocked by the speed, the chaos, the bloodiness, and the friction of a future fight in which this will be playing out, maybe in microseconds at times. How do we envision that fight happening? It has to be algorithm against algorithm," Shanahan said during a conversation with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google VP of global affairs Kent Walker.