US army experimenting with generative AI chatbots in war games: Report

The AI assistants immediately outputted many courses of action, at which point, a user playing the role of a commander asked the model to refine that output. While OpenAI’s GPT models worked better than the other two models, they also caused more casualties while carrying out mission objectives.

The use of generative AI is just one small part of the US Army’s push to take full advantage of artificial intelligence in their strategy. Project Maven, the US Department of Defense’s flagship AI effort, has located rocket launchers in Yemen and surface vessels in the Res Sea and helped narrow targets for strikes in Iraq and Syria, reported Bloomberg in February.

But this potential use of AI on battlefields also raise many ethical concerns. The prospect of leaving decisions that could potentially kill people to machines is more reminiscent of the Terminator series of movies than that of a bright future espoused by AI evangelists. But that has not stopped the military.

The Pentagon asked US lawmakers for billions of dollars to develop its artificial intelligence and networking capabilities, reported DefenseScoop in March. It has also established a Chief Digital and AI Officer positions to help use and spread the technology across the department.