We want to be smarter about what we're doing," he told Defense One. The idea is to reduce the amount of time analysts spend performing administrative tasks, like manually entering data into spreadsheets whenever they find something of interest, and more time actually analyzing. Should this program meet with success, Shanahan hopes to expand Project Maven's machine learning efforts throughout the rest of the armed services. For the department... logistics, command and control, communications," Shanahan told Defense One.

The likes of China -- who among other things is building cruise missiles with a certain degree of autonomy -- are nipping away at America's heels. The Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the centre of its strategy to maintain the United States' position as the world's dominant military power, earmarking $US18 billion ($23.5 billion) over the next three years for developing the technology. Speaking from San Francisco ahead of a major AI industry conference, Prof Walsh said unlike previous arms races, much of the progress in AI development was being made by private corporations. "It's the same sort of technology that is going to go into autonomous cars which is going to be a good thing ... but giving it the right to make life or death decisions (in the battlefield) is probably a bad idea," Prof Walsh said.

There is huge potential for deep machine learning to become a valuable asset in the intelligence gathering space, according to Pentagon Deputy Secretary Robert Work -- it could ultimately allow U.S. forces to get an edge in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, ISIL, IS) by providing greater insights into their networks and practices. The evaluative capabilities and intelligence gathering promise of deep machine learning, Work said, has already shown great potential through the use of publicly available materials on social media, which paint a clearer picture of the events surrounding the downing of Malaysian passenger airliner MH17. Growing tensions between Russia and China were also discussed as a point of concern around the potential for machines to be given lethal authority and how the U.S. might respond in such a case. "There are two things that really keep me up at night about this competition; the first is adversaries who will give machines lethal authority and how will we respond to that," he said.