Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s resignation has underscored growing concerns about the risks posed by AI. Coxon said that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Michael Hiatt, chief technology officer of Epirus, has taken a different tack.
During a panel regarding counter-drone defenses at the Air and Space Cyber Conference, Hiatt noted that “everyone talks about cost asymmetry… and how important that solving that cost asymmetry problem is. But for the folks that are on the ground, the battle captain trying to make that assessment, it’s not a cost asymmetry problem. It’s a magazine doubt issue.”
“When you have a problem like UAS threats, they’re coming in mass,” Hiatt continued. Trust in an airman’s system, he emphasized, is crucial when the threat time has been cut down to seconds.
“I know that my DE [Directed Energy] weapons are gonna be able to take it out, and do so in a low-collateral way, in a very low cost per shot way, and most importantly, in a way that preserves my magazine — my scarce interceptors, and then they’ll be able to push that button.”
The challenge, according to Hiatt, is “putting that work in and building that trust. It’s not science fiction. It’s physics fact.”
For Hiatt, utilizing AI in counter-drone defense is a tool with humans initially “in the loop” but ultimately working towards a system where humans start the loop and then end up on the outside of the operating system. However, building that trust amid an industry that is still formulating its own AI policy regulations is difficult, the panelists concede.
But despite this, the panelists argue, the proverbial cat is out of the bag regarding artificial intelligence, and the U.S. military must work on how to combat fast and reckless enemy AI agents that don’t necessarily operate with the same oversight.
The military must continue “to evolve, because the threat is evolving,” said panelist Colton Wood, chief technology officer of Digital Force Technologies. “And if we don’t evolve our defenses to basically counter that, we’re just gonna always be on our heels.
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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