CAMBRIA COUNTY, Pa (WJAC) — Earlier this week, we got a behind-the-scenes look at the A.I. developments being utilized by the U.S. military.
As the uses and capabilities of AI expand, we’re now asking, what will war look like in the coming years?
“Limitations, if you ask me that question, I’d say six months ago, I would have given you a list of limitations. But after what I’ve learned and experienced and came across recently, there’s no limitations,” says Christopher Watkins, president of Watkins Security LLC.
When asked about A.I. progressing on the battlefield, Watkins says we could see global conflicts become increasingly reliant on autonomous artificial intelligence in the next few years.
“In five years, military systems is certainly going to help not place our warfighters into a situation. Our nation’s greatest currency is our talent,” says Darin Mauzy, VP of operations for Mission Critical Solutions.
And while our country utilizes A.I. to protect our own, “that’s not necessarily true with our adversaries. Some of our adversaries don’t quite have the respect for human life,” says Ed Sheehan, president and CEO of Concurrent Technologies Corp.
Officials say our adversaries could jeopardize the U.S. at much higher stakes with AI integrated deeply into our society at large.
“Everything has a computer chip in it. I think the future is more where our enemy could shut down our country and not our military,” says Bill Polacek, CEO of JWF Industries.
And that’s where this could potentially go wrong.
“My concern is that AI could be a very inexpensive way for countries like Iran and China or Russia to enter your system, learn how to avert what we have for stop gaps and could really hurt the defense industry.”
Experts says it’s a matter of which countries can use AI best to protect their data and systems, while continuously advancing on the offensive side, and according to our local professionals, America is at the front of the pack.
“While I have concerns, they’re not high concerns because the same tools that our adversaries are using, we are using, and quite frankly we are using them better,” says David Partsch, chief data and information officer at CTC.
“You had an arms race, I think now you have an AI race,” adds Polacek.
Experts say part of being prepared to face off against adversarial AI is training up our next generation of cybersecurity experts with specialized skills.
“We teach our kids how to be the attacking side and the defending side. They need to learn both. You can’t do one without the other, and AI is being used on both sides of that,” explained Sarah Kral, cybersecurity instructor at River Valley STEAM Academy.
We’re working on command line internet tools and networking.
And what steps you need to take to make sure that private personal information won’t get into the wrong hands and how you can protect that.
Currently, in the workforce, A.I. is changing the way our local defense businesses hire and train talent.
“AI is absolutely influencing the talent that we’re hiring,” says Mauzy.
We have folks who have spent maybe the first 20 years of their career in the field of education as an example. We’ve hired them and have been able to work with them to become data experts or analytics experts or AI experts.
And AI is also being implemented into how employees learn and grow at our local defense companies.
They’ll be able to do things, something as simple as inventory. They’ll be able to grasp that a lot faster because they don’t have to learn from the ground floor. They’ll be able to have information at their fingertips much quicker.
With the rapid developments of AI and robotics for U.S. defense and beyond, there’s only one choice our country has to get ahead of our adversaries.
You’re either going to ride the wave or the wave is going to overcome you.
So, I would say within the next three to five years, technology is going to be ridiculous.