War is as old as the human race itself. The evolution of war is linked to the evolutionary trajectory of humankind for thousands of years. But there are few moments in history that seem to change the course of any society. The invention of gunpowder in China in the 8th century, the Gatling gun in the American civil war and the tank in the First World War changed the course of warfare.
Similarly, the advent of AI or Artificial Intelligence will change the course of warfare. It is the signature product of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and is a leap into the future.
Nature of Future Weapons
AI-based weapons will undoubtedly be more sophisticated than the current Large Language Machines (LLM) operated at platforms like ChatGPT, and Google’s Bard, and will be much smarter than them.
The nature of these weapons will certainly be meant to reduce human casualties as low as possible, the weapons will possess in-depth knowledge of the concerned target, and they can certainly take into account the range, precision, likelihood of casualties and the way to avoid them.
What will make these weapons far more lethal and precision oriented is the ability to avoid what is known as ‘human error’. The large number of civilian casualties that American drone missions exacted in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ensuing human rights violations will be avoidable.
These weapons will be autonomous i.e., killer robots are fed with the necessary intelligence to neutralise the target and come back unharmed. While robots may not be the best choice for reconnaissance missions, an automated drone or fighter jet will be the perfect choice.
The Future Skynet
The third film in the Terminator franchise titled “Terminator-Rise of the Machines” was a masterpiece in that it predicted quite accurately the rise of an autonomous cyberspace system like Skynet. While the likelihood of machines turning against their human creators is a distant possibility as Skynet did, what is distinctly possible is that countries with a strong IT base like the USA, India and China can in the near future hand over the maintenance of the cyber security of the entire country to such a Skynet like system, which can prove to be resilient against exogenous attacks.
However, care must be taken to ensure that the human presence is always maintained in operationalisation of such systems. The Skynet-like system must be made ‘autonomous’ and not given complete liberty, this can be done by feeding the algorithmic code in such a way that the machine will ultimately fall back to human hands in case of any assistance or dealing with an extraordinary threat.
India to Take the Lead
India, the IT superpower, will be bound to take the lead on this AI use. During the recent visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the USA and France, pledges were made covering the domain of technical cooperation in the AI field and Quantum computing.
Artificial Intelligence is already being harnessed in India in a big way, engineering and science courses in the Tier-1 and Tier-2 colleges and universities in the country are teaching courses on AI and its applications in the fields of industry and academia.
DRDO, ISRO and HAL are working on a war footing to make the most of AI in the field of defence. The likelihood of seeing AI-operated hunter-killer drones, fighter jets and tanks may become a distinct possibility for India in the near future, which may operate at the harshest of battlegrounds such as Dras in Kargil and Siachen glacier.
With a highly skilled population and a booming start-up ecosystem, AI is sure to revolutionise the field of defence in India. This is all the more necessary to shore up India’s cyber defence to avert any future attacks on India’s growing digital economic and health infrastructure. Incidents like the hacking of AIIMS Delhi by state-sponsored Chinese hackers can no longer be allowed.
Conclusion
AI will revolutionise warfare, casualties will be minimised; the need for boots on the ground may come down thereby contributing to the downsizing and rightsizing of the armed forces. This is what is needed in India’s case – a leaner and more tech-savvy force with the right mixture of talent and physical prowess.
–The writer is currently working as a Research Associate at Defence Research and Studies (dras.in) and is a columnist. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
