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Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles are shaping our daily lives, society, and will continue to transform how we will fight future wars. Advances in AI technologies have fueled an explosion of interest in the military and political domain. As AI technologies evolve, there will be increased reliance on these systems to maintain global security. For the individual and society, AI presents challenges related to surveillance, personal freedom, and privacy. For the military, we will need to exploit advances in AI technologies to support the warfighter and ensure global security. The integration of AI technologies in the battlespace presents advantages, costs, and risks in the future battlespace. This chapter will examine the issues related to advances in AI technologies, as we examine the benefits, costs, and risks associated with integrating AI and autonomous systems in society and in the future battlespace.

Weapons systems and platforms guided by Artificial Intelligence can be designed for greater autonomous decision-making with less real-time human control. Their performance will depend upon independent assessments about the relative benefits, burdens, threats, and risks involved with possible action or inaction. An ethical dimension to autonomous Artificial Intelligence (aAI) is therefore inescapable. The actual performance of aAI can be morally evaluated, and the guiding heuristics to aAI decision-making could incorporate adherence to ethical norms. Who shall be rightly held responsible for what happens if and when aAI commits immoral or illegal actions? Faulting aAI after misdeeds occur is not the same as holding it morally responsible, but that does not mean that a measure of moral responsibility cannot be programmed. We propose that aAI include a “Cooperating System” for participating in the communal ethos within NSID/military organizations.

The diffusion and adoption (D&A) of innovation propels today's technological landscape. Crisis situations, real or perceived, motivate communities of people to take action to adopt and diffuse innovation. The D&A of innovation is an inherently human activity; yet, artificially intelligent techniques can assist humans in six different ways, especially when operating in fifth generation ecosystems that are emergent, complex, and adaptive in nature.

Humans can use artificial intelligence (AI) to match solutions to problems, design for diffusion, identify key roles in social networks, reveal unintended consequences, recommend pathways for scaling that include the effects of policy, and identify trends for fast-follower strategies. The stability of the data that artificially intelligent systems rely upon will challenge performance; nevertheless, the research in this area has positioned several promising techniques where classically narrow AI systems can assist humans. As a result, human and machine interaction can accelerate the D&A of technological innovation to respond to crisis situations.

This chapter presents reflections and considerations regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and contemporary and future warfare. As “an evolving collection of computational techniques for solving problems,” AI holds great potential for national defense endeavors (Rubin, Stafford, Mertoguno, & Lukos, 2018). Though decades old, AI is becoming an integral instrument of war for contemporary warfighters. But there are also challenges and uncertainties. Johannsen, Solka, and Rigsby (2018), scientists who work with AI and national defense, ask, “are we moving too quickly with a technology we still don't fully understand?” Their concern is not if AI should be used, but, if research and development of it and pursuit of its usage are following a course that will reap the rewards desired. Although they have long-term optimism, they ask: “Until theory can catch up with practice, is a system whose outputs we can neither predict nor explain really all that desirable?” ¹ Time (speed of development) is a factor, but so too are research and development priorities, guidelines, and strong accountability mechanisms. ²

New technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), have helped us begin to take our first steps off Earth and into outer space. But conflicts inevitably will arise and, in the absence of settled governance, may be resolved by force, as is typical for new frontiers. But the terrestrial assumptions behind the ethics of war will need to be rethought when the context radically changes, and both the environment of space and the advent of robotic warfighters with superhuman capabilities will constitute such a radical change. This essay examines how new autonomous technologies, especially dual-use technologies, and the challenges to human existence in space will force us to rethink the ethics of war, both from space to Earth, and in space itself.

Constant transformation plays a crucial role in the future success of the NATO Alliance. In the contemporary security environment, those who can get the latest technology to the war fighter faster will tend to enjoy a comparative advantage, unless that technology in turn blinds the organization to alternatives. Thus, the author lays out a strategic vision for AI enabled transformation for the Alliance detailing NATO's ability to adapt throughout history, introducing contemporary efforts for AI enabled tech solutions for NATO, but also pointing out the necessity of organizational learning.

His conclusion is that in an age where technological development is exponential, the Alliance appears increasingly unable to deal with the problems related to the exponential technology disruption. Complex contexts require a different mindset, and NATO has to look for new AI enabled tools, to face the increasing number of wicked problems. Most importantly he points out that building a platform with AI enabled technological solutions is only one side of the coin. There is a need for an organizational one as well which connects the different components together, and creates interoperability within the Alliance. As NATO incorporates new AI solutions, there is a need for introducing radically new training and education solutions, and create a framework for what the author calls Mission Command 2.0.