On June 23, Breaking Defense reported that the U.S. Air Force is studying the military application of generative AI such as ChatGPT.
Frank Kendall, the current U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, said generative AI currently has "limited use" for the U.S. military, but could help with some tasks if applied in an ethical way.
In an online interview with the Center for a New American Security, Frank Kendall said: "I have asked the Scientific Advisory Board to do two things with AI. First, research generative AI technologies like ChatGPT and think about their military applications.
Second, form an AI-focused science and technology division that will focus on a broad collection of AI technologies to help the military sector gain a deeper understanding of the applications, cancellations, and integration methods of these technologies.
Kendall emphasized that at present, generative AI such as ChatGPT can create text, code, pictures and other content, but the content it generates may have false information, so there is still a long way to go in terms of functions and application scenarios. Still, these AI technologies can help us.
In recent years, traditional AI technologies such as OCR (optical character recognition), NLP (natural language processing), and ML (machine learning) have been widely recognized by the military, and the main application scenarios include military operation simulation, shooting training, etc. However, generative AI technology is a new technology, which is still in the stage of product polishing, function optimization, and application scenario exploration.
Kendall believes that if such decision-making AI tools are widely used in commercialization, they will have good results. Then, they will inevitably be used in the military field.
Frank Kendall, the current Secretary of the Air Force
As early as the beginning of the year, when ChatGPT swept the world, military media in various countries analyzed the application of ChatGPT in the military field, mainly focusing on training, intelligence analysis, auxiliary decision-making, supply chain and other business scenarios.
1. Military training: ChatGPT can improve soldiers' reflexes and tactical understanding by simulating different battlefield scenarios and enemy strategies. For example, the tactics of enemy commanders can be imitated to help soldiers understand and predict possible enemy actions. In addition, ChatGPT can also provide personalized training and feedback to each soldier based on their performance and reaction time.
2. Intelligence Analysis: ChatGPT can process a large amount of publicly available intelligence information and extract useful information from it. The effort of manual analysis can be greatly reduced.
3. Military strategic planning: ChatGPT can provide possible military strategies and tactical suggestions based on historical data and existing tactical theories.
4. War Games: ChatGPT can be used to design and run complex war simulation games, which can be used for training and research.
5. Psychological warfare: ChatGPT can be used to generate psychological warfare information, such as fake news, misleading information, etc., to influence the enemy's decision-making.
6. Drone Control: ChatGPT can be used to parse and generate control commands for drones to enable them to perform tasks more efficiently.
7. Communication password decryption: ChatGPT can be used to try to decrypt enemy communications, especially if some decryption keywords are known. For example, Morse Code, Quad Code, Hill Code, Borefi Code, etc.
8. Predictive analysis: Using the predictive power of ChatGPT, you can predict the possible actions of the enemy so that you can prepare a response strategy in advance.
9. AI-assisted decision-making: Military commanders can use ChatGPT to help them make decisions in complex tactical scenarios, for example, in force deployment and class restraint.
10. Casualty Classification: On the battlefield, ChatGPT can be used to quickly analyze the wounded to prioritize the most serious wounded.
11. Supply Chain Management: ChatGPT can help militaries manage their supply chains more efficiently, anticipate possible bottlenecks, and provide solutions.
12. Training simulation: ChatGPT can be used to create a virtual training environment so that soldiers are fully prepared before the real battlefield.
13. AI translation: ChatGPT can be used to translate enemy language in real time, helping intelligence officers better understand enemy plans.
14. Virtual Military Exercises: ChatGPT can be used to design and execute virtual military exercises, offering a variety of possible tactics and strategies.
15. Intelligence Gathering: ChatGPT can gather intelligence from publicly available sources of information, which can then be analyzed and summarized.
It should be noted that although ChatGPT can be used in the military in theory, it may encounter many problems and challenges in actual operation, such as data security, ethics and other issues. Therefore, when the actual application is in the military field, a lot of tailor-made and functional transformation is required.
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