Army Rapidly Accelerates Development of Armed, AI-Enabled Robots to Fight with Soldiers

File Video Above: Accelerated Army New Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Will Launch Drones

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Yes. Army robots will be armed with weapons but ..no.. there will not be a terminator anytime soon. 

Decisions regarding the use of lethal force are, by Pentagon doctrine, required to be made by humans. This is of course for ethical and tactical reasons, as there are clearly more subjective variables of great relevance to decisions about lethal force which a machine is not well-positioned to understand. The unique attributes of human reasoning, intuition, feeling and intent are not things a mathematically-driven robot are in any way able to replicate.

However, there are calculations, procedural functions, data analysis and information organization tasks which AI-enabled machines can perform at exponentially-faster speeds. 

“Human-in-the-Loop”

This is a fast-evolving technological phenomenon, and the Pentagon’s “human-in-the-loop” does not mean there will not be huge leaps forward in the realm of robotic autonomy. 

As algorithms advance, robots and unmanned systems will increasingly be positioned to take on more responsibility and decision-making authority to, among other things, greatly reduce the “cognitive load” placed upon human decision makers. The optimal strategy, Army modernization leaders believe, involves a careful blend of human cognition and AI-enabled unmanned autonomy.