Chinese scientists create and breed world's first AI commander in PLA laboratory

The groundbreaking research project was made public in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese-language journal Common Control & Simulation in May. The team, led by senior engineer Jia Chenxing, said that AI technology holds both potential and risks for military applications, but that the project offered a “viable” solution to a growing challenge.

In China, the military must strictly adhere to the principle that “the Party controls the guns.” Only the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China has the authority to mobilize the People's Liberation Army.

As AI technology Gain independent decision-making capabilities and operate drones and Robot Dog There is greater freedom of movement and firepower, but command at headquarters remains firmly in human hands.

The PLA has many operational plans in preparation for potential military conflict in the following regions: Taiwan And that South China SeaA key task for scientists will be to test these plans in simulations, “weighing the pros and cons and gain insight into the chaos of combat,” Jia and his colleagues wrote.

Operational-level military simulations often require the participation of human commanders to respond to unexpected events and make on-the-fly decisions, but the number and availability of senior PLA commanders is very limited, making it impossible for them to participate in a large number of war simulations.

“Current joint operational simulation systems lack a joint battle-level command entity, resulting in poor results in simulation experiments,” the researchers said.

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The AI commander can assume command authority when a human commander is unable to participate in large-scale virtual battles or is unable to exercise command authority, and is free to exercise its powers without human interference within the confines of the laboratory.

“The highest-level commander is the sole core decision-making body for the entire operation and has the final decision-making responsibility and authority,” Jia and his colleagues wrote. artificial intelligence In military studies.

For example, the U.S. Army's AI will only function as a “commander's virtual staff” to support decision-making. United States Air Force According to Jia's team, they will only take part in front-line training and will not interfere with operations headquarters activities.

Each senior PLA commander has a different fighting style, for example, General Peng Dehuai, who led surprise raids and incursions by the US military under the Communist regime of China, dealing a major blow to the US forces. Korean WarLike American General George Patton, Peng liked to take risks to win.

Meanwhile, General Lin Biao, famous for his victories over the Japanese and Nationalists, was risk-averse and boasted a meticulous decision-making style similar to that of British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.

Jia's team said the AI commander's initial configuration reflects an experienced and skilled strategist, “with a sound mentality, a calm and steadfast personality, able to calmly analyze and judge situations, not make emotional or impulsive decisions, and able to recall similar decision-making scenarios from memory and quickly devise practical plans.”

However, this setting is not absolutely fixed.

“The virtual commander's personality can be tweaked if deemed necessary,” they added.

Jia's team said that under great pressure, humans “struggle to formulate a fully rational decision-making framework within tight deadlines.”

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Instead of using pure analysis, the AI commander will rely more on empirical knowledge for combat decisions, searching for satisfactory solutions, retrieving similar scenarios from memory, and quickly formulating viable plans.

But humans can also be forgetful. To simulate this key weakness, the scientists also imposed a size limit on the AI commander's decision-making knowledge base: when the memory limit is reached, some knowledge units are dumped.

AI Commander: People's Liberation Army They conduct large volumes of war simulations without human intervention, they identify new threats, they develop plans, they make optimal decisions based on the overall situation when battles go wrong or produce no results, and they learn and adapt from victories and losses.

All of this is done without human intervention, “boasting advantages such as ease of implementation, high efficiency, and support for repeated experimentation,” Jia's team said.

Countries around the world are entering a race to apply AI to military applications, with China and the United States taking the lead.

meanwhile Beijing and Washington While we strive not to be outdone in this important field, we share concerns about the threat that the unrestrained development of AI poses to human security.

Senior Chinese, US and Russian officials negotiation It will develop a set of regulations to mitigate the risks of AI militarization, including banning AI from controlling nuclear weapons.

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