Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Modern Warfare :: essays research papers

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Modern WarfareIt is well known that throughout history mans favourite past time has been tomake war. It has always been recognised that the opponent with the better appliances usually came out victorious. Nowadays, there is an increasing dependency,by the much developed nations, on what are called smart weapons and on thedevelopment of these weapons. The social impact of AI on war is somethingwhich needs to be considered very carefully for it raises many ethical and moralissues and arguments. The use of smart weapons raises many questions on theprice paid to develop these weapons money which could be used to solve close ofthe worlds social problems such as poverty, hunger, etc. A nonher issue is thesafety involved in the use of these weapons. Can we really make a weapon thatdoes everything on its own without human help and are these weapons a threat tocivilians? The main goal of this essay is to discuss whether it is justifiableto use AI in warfar e and to what extent.The old time dream of making war bloodless by science is finally becoming areality. The strongest man will not win, but the one with the best machines will.Modernising the weapons used in war has been an issue since the beginning.Nowadays, the military has spent billions of dollars perfecting stealthtechnology to allow planes to slip past resistance lines undetected. The technologyinvolved in a complicated system such as these fighter planes is immense. Theolder planes are packed with high tech tilt such as micro processors, laserguiding devices, electromagnetic jammers and infrared sensors. With newer planes,the airforce is experimenting with a virtual reality helmet that projects acartoon like human body of the battlefield for the pilot, with flashing symbols forenemy planes. What is more, if a pilot passes out for various reasons such asthe "G" force from a tight turn, then a computer system can automatically takeover while the pilot is disabled. A recent example of the use of Al in warfareis the Gulf War. In operation Desert Storm, many weapons such as smart Bombswere used. These were highly complex systems which used superior guidancecapabilities but they did not chair any expert systems or neural networks.The development of weapons which use highly complex systems has drasticallyreduced the number of human casualties in wartime. The bloodshed is minimisedbecause of the truth of the computer systems used. This has been an advantagethat has brought a lot of praise to the development of such sophisticated (not