America's military budget, at $615 billion, dwarfs those of its closest competitors, China ($211 billion) and Russia ($69 billion). Even with that advantage, a new report finds that the U.S. is at risk of falling behind in the race to find and create AI for military applications. In 2014, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that his department intended to lead the coming AI revolution with what he called the "Third Offset Strategy." For the uninitiated, the Second Offset Strategy was in response to the buildup of conventional forces along the Central European front by the Soviet Union and its satellite states ... which itself was a response to the First Offset Strategy that had the U.S. putting its own forces in the field. America didn't want to match the Soviets soldier for soldier, so new technology like long-range sensors and a new generation of guided munitions and submunitions was developed to give the U.S. an edge.

Dr. Jason Matheny, director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), gave the first keynote at USGIF's Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Workshop Jan. 10 in Herndon, Va., with a strong articulation of why nearly 300 people were gathered for a day of presentations and discussion. "We're well past the point that it would've been possible for an agency of human analysts or 17 agencies of human analysts to have enough brains and eyeballs to perform their mission," Matheny said. "So finding some way of bringing machines to scale up and address our problems is a way of bridging the gap between the resources we have and the resources we need. It allows us to focus human brains and eyeballs on the problems where they're most needed." Machine learning (ML) progress accelerated in the last several years and has been especially celebrated in the case of deep learning, according to Matheny.

Autonomy and artificial intelligence may be integral to the Defense Department's Third Offset Strategy, but making those technologies useful will require IT investments to integrate them into defense systems, a new report says. "Both the DOD and the Intelligence Community, they are investing in these technologies. So artificial intelligence is a big priority area, machine learning, all these technologies," Matthew Hummer, director of analytics at big-data and analytics firm Govini, told FedScoop. "But they haven't really done a good job of integrating it into the current Distributed Common Ground Systems. And that's because those systems really need pretty much a big overhaul to be able to do that."

Autonomy is coming to warfare, and some would say it's already here. Weapon systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms will soon be making potentially deadly decisions on the battlefield. This transition is not theoretical. The immense capability of large numbers of autonomous systems represents a revolution in warfare that no country can ignore. As we march towards this reality, it is important that technology leaders and military strategists begin a discussion around the moral and legal framework within which such autonomous capabilities will be enabled.

Autonomy is coming to warfare, and some would say it's already here. Weapon systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms will soon be making potentially deadly decisions on the battlefield. This transition is not theoretical. The immense capability of large numbers of autonomous systems represents a revolution in warfare that no country can ignore. As we march towards this reality, it is important that technology leaders and military strategists begin a discussion around the moral and legal framework within which such autonomous capabilities will be enabled.

This week, in Geneva, Indian diplomats are closely monitoring an international expert review of the legal implications of the so-called "lethal autonomous weapons". These weapons will have the capability of selecting and engaging targets on their own. Although fully autonomous weapons are yet to register significant presence in the arsenal of any nation, many consider their development and deployment inevitable in the coming years. Rapid advances in robotics, machine-learning and big-data analytics are at once driving the so-called "fourth industrial revolution" and the transformation of modern warfare. How the leading powers mobilise and deploy these technologies will shape the balance of economic and military power among them in the coming decades.

ARLINGTON: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing artificial intelligence that can help humans understand the floods of data they unleashed 50 years ago with the Internet and make better decisions, even in the heat of battle. Such "human-machine collaboration" -- informally known as the centaur model -- is the high-tech holy grail of the Defense Department's plan to counter Russian and Chinese advances, known as the Third Offset Strategy. "We've had some great conversations with the deputy," said DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, referring to the chief architect of Offset, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work. "In many of our programs you'll see some of the technology components" of the strategy. "Fundamentally, what's behind the push of the Third Offset Strategy is this idea that the department needs to reinvigorate our ability to develop these advanced technologies," Prabhakar said.

The Pentagon's No. 2 civilian official said Wednesday that the Defense Department is concerned that adversary nations could empower advanced weapons systems to act on their own, noting that while the United States will not give them the authority to kill autonomously, other countries might. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work said the Pentagon hasn't "fully figured out" the issue of autonomous machines, but continues to examine it. The U.S. military has built a force that relies heavily on the decision-making skills of its troops, but "authoritarian regimes" may find weapons that can act independently more attractive because doing so would consolidate the ability to take action among a handful of leaders, he said. "We will not delegate lethal authority to a machine to make a decision," Work said. "The only time we will… delegate a machine authority is in things that go faster than human reaction time, like cyber or electronic warfare."

The Pentagon's No. 2 civilian official said Wednesday that the Defense Department is concerned that adversary nations could empower advanced weapons systems to act on their own, noting that while the United States will not give them the authority to kill autonomously, other countries might. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said the Pentagon hasn't "fully figured out" the issue of autonomous machines, but continues to examine it. The U.S. military has built a force that relies heavily on the decision-making skills of its troops, but "authoritarian regimes" may find weapons that can act independently more attractive because it consolidates the ability to take action among a handful of leaders, he said. "We will not delegate lethal authority to a machine to make a decision," Work said. "The only time we will ... delegate a machine authority is in things that go faster than human reaction time, like cyber or electronic warfare."