War, AI and the New Global Arms Race | Alexandr Wang | TED

Artificial intelligence and warfare.

Let's talk about what this really could look like.

Swarms of lethal drones with facial recognition

that know your every move.

Or unmanned armed robots that are near impossible to defeat.

Autonomous fighter jets that can travel at supersonic speeds

and can withstand greater gravitational force

than a human pilot could survive.

Cyberattacks that incapacitate critical port infrastructure

or disinformation campaigns and deepfakes that throw presidential elections.

Or even foreign adversaries taking out satellites,

our eyes and ears in space,

rendering us blind to global events.

All superintelligent weapons of terror.

We are at the dawn of a new age of warfare.

I grew up in the birthplace of a technology

that defined the last era of warfare,

the atomic bomb.

I was keenly aware of how this technology had fundamentally shaped geopolitics

and the nature of war.

My parents were both scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

My dad’s a physicist, and my mom’s an astrophysicist.

Their scientific work in plasma fluid dynamics

will have deep implications for how we understand our universe.

So naturally, I knew I wanted to work on something just as impactful.

I decided to become a programmer and study artificial intelligence.

AI is one of the most critical technologies of our time

and with deep implications for national security

and democracy globally.

As we saw in World War II with the atomic bomb,

the country that is able to most rapidly and effectively

integrate new technology into warfighting wins.

There's no reason to believe this will be any different with AI.

But in the AI arms race, we're already behind.

From a technological perspective,

China is already ahead of the United States

in computer vision AI.

And in large language models, like ChatGPT,

they are fast followers.

In terms of military implementations,

they're outspending us:

adjusted for total military budget,

China's spending ten times more than the United States.

Why are we so far behind?

The answer is twofold.

First, data supremacy.

Despite having the largest fleet of military hardware in the world,

most of the data from this fleet is thrown away or inaccessible,

hidden away on hard drives that never see the light of day.

This is our Achilles heel.

In an AI war, everything boils down to data.

For defense AI,

data from the internet is not enough.

Most of the data needs to come from our military assets,

sensors and collaborations with tech companies.

Military commanders need to know how to use data as a military asset.

I've heard this first-hand many times,

from my conversations with military personnel,

including most recently

from Lieutenant General Richard R. Coffman,

deputy commanding general for United States Army Futures Command.

Second, despite being home to the leading technology companies

at the forefront of artificial intelligence,

the US tech industry has largely shied away

from taking on government contracts.

Somewhere along the line,

tech leaders decided that working with the government was taboo.

As a technologist,

I'm often asked how I'm bettering this world.

This is how I'm improving the future of our world:

by helping my country succeed

and providing the best tools and technology

to ensure that the United States government can defend its citizens,

allies and partners.

(Applause)

The Ukraine war has demonstrated that the nature of war has changed.

Through AI overmatch, Ukraine is challenging an adversary

with far superior numbers of troops and weapons.

Before the Ukraine war,

Russia had spent an estimated 65 billion US dollars

on its military expenditures,

whereas Ukraine only spent about six billion dollars.

It's estimated that Russia had over 900,000 military troops

and 1,300 aircraft,

whereas Ukraine only had 200,000 military troops and 130 aircraft.

Technologies such as drones,

AI-based targeting and image intelligence

and Javelin missiles

have enabled a shocking defense of Ukraine.

AI is proving invaluable for defending Ukrainian cities and infrastructure

against missile and drone bombardment.

At Scale, we’re using our novel machine learning algorithm

for battle damage assessment in key areas affected by the war.

We've rapidly analyzed over 2,000 square kilometers

and have identified over 370,000 structures,

including thousands not previously identified

by other open source data sets.

We focused on Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro

and provided our data directly

in a publicly accessible data set to the broader AI community.

One of the key problems we're solving

is using AI to analyze massive amounts of imagery and detect objects

because humans just can't keep up.

We've received an overwhelming response from our free AI-ready data set

and have provided it directly to the United States and NATO allies.

And it's been downloaded over 2,000 times by AI companies, researchers,

developers and GIS practitioners.

AI can also be used for change detection.

Simply put, algorithms can constantly monitor imagery

and notify a human to investigate further if there's a change or a movement.

It's clear that AI is increasingly powering warfare.

And based on the rate of progress in the AI field,

I predict that in ten years, it will be the dominant force.

Disinformation and misinformation are already huge problems.

And this technology is only going to make it worse.

Tools like ChatGPT have enabled AI to generate imagery,

text, audio, video, code and even reason.

These tools can generate realistic-looking and realistic-sounding content,

which on top of bot-run social media accounts

will make it nearly impossible to identify disinformation

and misinformation online.

Bad actors can use these tools to supercharge misinformation

and propagate falsehoods.

China already uses disinformation campaigns

and social media manipulations heavily in Taiwan,

particularly during elections.

Or take Russia's propaganda machine,

which in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

created a deepfake of Ukrainian President Zelensky

calling for Ukrainian troops to surrender.

This deepfake was easy to spot,

but the next one may not be.

This also takes place within our borders,

from social media algorithm manipulation

to advertising microtargeting and geofencing,

to deepfakes of politicians and bot-run social media accounts.

The United States is not excused

from exacerbating disinformation and misinformation.

These tools are universally accessible at low or no cost,

meaning they can be employed by anyone anywhere

to undermine the sanctity of democracy globally.

However, all hope is not lost.

If we properly invest

into data infrastructure and data preparation,

all this can be avoided.

Deterrence is nothing new to military thinking.

As we saw in World War II with the atomic bomb,

it was a primary factor in deterring foreign adversaries

from going to nuclear war for more than six decades.

Because the stakes of going to war with such a technology

were simply too high.

We're likely to see a new calculus emerge with AI.

It's uncharted territory, nobody knows what it will look like

or the toll it will take.

How do we know if our AI is better than our adversaries'?

We won't.

But one thing is clear:

AI can only be as powerful as the underlying data

that is used to fuel its algorithms.

Data will be a new kind of ammunition in the era of AI warfare.

In the tech industry, we often talk about missions.

They're often frivolous.

Do they really change the world or save lives?

This mission, on the other hand, really matters.

The AI war will define the future of our world

and has the potential to shift the balance of diplomatic power.

It's clear that digital warfare

is not some dystopian reality, tucked away in a faraway future.

It is taking place in the here and now.

We cannot sit by the sidelines

and watch the rise of an authoritarian regime.

It is in moments like this

that technologists can either rise to the challenge or stand idle.

I encourage my fellow technologists

to understand the austerity and severity of our times

and commit themselves to supporting national security.

While I find it shocking that most American AI companies

have chosen not to support national security,

I do hope others join us.

We must fight for the world we want to live in.

It's never mattered more.

Thank you.

(Applause)