AI in C2

Everyone seems to be talking about how Artificial Intelligence inside HQs will revolutionise command and control. The issue is that we don’t even seem to have an agreed definition of AI, and the pol and mil leaders providing this rhetoric don’t seem to have an answer to that either (or really understand what it is). Sitting down with two AI specialists, people who work with AI engineers on a daily basis, was enlightening in terms of definitions, clarity and perspective. The reality – from people who make this happen – is that AI (as described by many people) is some way away from widespread utility on military operations: the policy drivers are absent, the confusion with autonomy is widespread, the military purpose is ill defined, and there is a missing pragmatism from the reality of technical development (not least in the inability to provide AI systems with clean databases to learn from). This view from the coalface of C2/AI development is genuinely enlightening.