AI and the UAV

The UAV

Modern warfare has become a totally different ball game. The word automation in this scenario has gained a whole new level of contextual relevance. It is no longer about who fights better, who fights longer or who has that slight incremental advantage in weaponry and personnel over the other, but it has become more about who fights smarter, the side that has the technological edge has complete dominance and control on the war front.

The UAV, short for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is a clear cut example as to how better technology ensures military superiority. A very broad definition of an UAV would be that it is an aircraft which has autonomous control over its flight systems and whose functions can either be controlled by an external controller sitting on some ground station or its functionality can also be autonomous.

The UAV was created with the main intention to simulate the actions of a pilot in the cockpit of an aircraft without the pilot actually being present. It was a creation which satisfied the need of the military. Covert operations involving air-strikes sometimes get too dangerous and sending in a pilot operated aircraft could put the life of the pilot at risk. So inventors came up with the idea that instead of sending pilots in the war-zone why not simulate the actions that a real pilot does, somehow transfer the real-time decision making ability and tactical intelligence that the pilot shows into a computer? 

 

UAV an AI

This is how the UAV, a machine which possessed artificial intelligence originated. The analysis of this article is to compare the similarities between the UAV which is the machine with the AI and the action which this machine simulates which is the actual pilot in the cockpit scenario and to know where to draw the line between simulative technology and the real-deal.

UAV’s basically mimic the behavior of human pilots in combat situation and more importantly tough their lethal functions (missiles and guns) are sometimes controlled by an operator on the ground, flight related decisions are made by the computers on the aircraft in real time. This means that they fly on their own by judging the surrounding and then make decisions without any human intervention. This is the artificial intelligence embedded in them. In the present day scenario of warfare these systems have been immensely successful. Especially in the war against terrorism UAV’s have reportedly destroyed innumerable Al-Qaeda bases and have eliminated many members in the top brass of the terrorist organization. The main reason behind their success has been that these machines are designed to mimic the action of top notch pilots. But an important point here is that if pilots of the air-force are sent into the same situation, however brilliant and professional the pilot is, there is a constant life-risk factor playing at the back of the pilots mind, this fear will affect the quality of the decisions the pilot makes. Now in the case of UAV’s this risk factor is absent and the combat-decisions made will be of a much better quality and more importantly there is absolutely no need to stay on the back-foot as there are no lives at risk. This becomes especially relevant when the enemy as in the case of terrorists is made up of fanatics who are ready to go to any extent, even sacrifice their lives to substantiate their cause.

DRAWING THE LINE

So the question to be asked here is how much of the pilots tactical function can the UAV’s actually replicate and where do we draw the line and say that that’s it, only so much of modern warfare can be mechanized and at some junction or the other some level of human intervention has to take place because after-all war isn’t some sort of video game, there are lives which hang in the balance. For the last 5000 years humans have had complete monopoly over warfare in the sense that it was humans themselves who went into the warzone and fought for what they believed in. But now with the introduction of these autonomous ‘warbots’, the present generation is witnessing a complete change in the art of war in the sense that till date military superiority was all about incremental changes, who has higher fire-power who can build a tank with slightly better guns, but now this situation has completely changes because we are now changing ‘who’ exactly is fighting the war. We are in an absolute turning point in human history as far as warfare is concerned because we humans are now losing control over the one thing which was thought to be in our control.

THE ANTITHESIS OF THE MECHANIST APPROACH 
The reason the points mentioned above are brought up because at the end of the day there is a reason why there is a need of human command in war. War is never black and white so there need to be conscious decisions made and the bottom line is at least present day AI and that of the near future just can’t replicate this. All these machines want to do is seek and destroy their targets, period. They are very unlikely to call off strikes because the civilian casualties and the collateral damage involved is too high and this argument is supported by solid facts in Afganistan for every terrorist eliminated by drones (this is how they are known in the military) there are 10 civilians who lose their life. Another argument to pose here is that since these machines don’t have a conscious, they don’t see surrendering as an option, this is just speculative but imagine to what levels warfare could go to if both sides have such machines, because of the lack of a conscious, machines from both sides will battle it out to the end and the collateral then will be just mind-numbing.
 So in conclusion, there are a lot of similarities between AI and human functions they replicate and it is very tempting at least in the case of war, to outsource all the important missions to UAV’s  but at the same time there are many dissimilarities and these should be kept in mind because after all war isn’t a videogame.