Summary War, AI and the New Global Arms Race | Alexandr Wang | TED - YouTube (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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Alexandr Wang Artificial intelligence and warfare. Let's talk about what this really could look like. Swarms of lethal drones with facial recognition that know your every move. Or unmanned armed robots that are near impossible to defeat. Autonomous fighter jets that can travel at supersonic speeds, and can withstand greater gravitational force than the human pilot could survive.
Alexandr Wang Cyber attacks that inca critical port infrastructure, or disinformation campaigns and deep fix that throw presidential elections or even for adversaries, take out satellites, our eyes and ears in space, us blind to global events. All super intelligent weapons, of terror. We're the dawn of a new age of warfare. I grew up in the birthplace of a technology that defined the last era of warfare, the atomic bomb. I was keenly aware of how this technology had fundamentally shaped geopolitics and the nature war.
Alexandr Wang My parents were both scientists I will sell almost national laboratory. My dad's a and my mom's an astrophysicist. Their scientific work in plasma fluid dynamics will have deep implications AI-powered how we understand our universe. So naturally, I knew I wanted to work on something just as impactful. I decide to become a programmer and study artificial intelligence.
Alexandr Wang Ai is 1 of the most critical technologies of our time. And will deep implications for National Security and democracy globally. As we saw in World War 2 with the atomic bomb The country that is able to most rapidly and effectively integrate new technology into war fighting wins. There's no reason to believe this will be any different. With Ai.
Alexandr Wang But in the Ai arms race, we're already behind. From a technological perspective, China is already head of the United States. In computer vision Ai and in large language models like Chat, they're are fast followers. In terms of military implementations, they're outs spending us. Adjusted for total military budget, China spending 10 times more than the United States.
Alexandr Wang Why are we so far behind? The answer is twofold. First, data supremacy. Despite having the largest fleet of military hardware in the world, most of the data from this fleet is thrown away or inaccessible. Hidden away on hard drives that never see the light of day.
Alexandr Wang This is our achilles heel. And in ai war, everything boils down to data. For defense Ai, data from the Internet, is not enough. Most of the data needs to come from our military assets, sensors, and collaborations with tech companies. Military commanders need to know how to use data as a military asset.
Alexandr Wang I've heard this first firsthand many times for my conversations with military personnel. Including most recently from Lieutenant General, Richard Arc kaufman, Deputy Commanding General for United States Army Futures command. Second, Despite being home to the leading technology companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence, the Us tech industry has largely shi away from take government contracts. Somewhere more along the line, tech leaders decided that working with the government was Taboo. As a technologist, I'm often ask how in better this world.
Alexandr Wang This is how I'm improving the future of our world by helping my country succeed, and providing the best tools and technology to ensure that the United States Government can defend its citizens, allies and partners. Ukraine war has demonstrated that the nature of war has changed. Through Ai match, Ukraine is challenging and adversary with far superior numbers of troops and weapons. Before the Ukraine War, Russia had spent an estimated 65000000000 us dollars on its military expenditures. Whereas Ukraine only spent about 6000000000 dollars.
Alexandr Wang It's estimated that Russia had over 900000 military troops and 1300 aircraft. Whereas Ukraine, only add 200000 military troops and a hundred 30 aircraft. Technologies, such as drones, Ai based targeting and image intelligence and Ja missiles have enabled a shocking defense of Ukraine. Ai is proving invaluable for defending Ukrainian cities and infrastructure against missile and drone bombardment. At scale, we're using our novel machine learning algorithm for battle damage assessment in key areas affected by the war.
Alexandr Wang We've rapidly analyzed over 2000 square kilometers and have identified over 370000 structures. Including thousands, not previously identified by other open source datasets. We focused on Kiev, Car, and Nip, and provided our data directly in a publicly accessible dataset to the broader Ai community. 1 of the key problems we're solving is using Ai to analyze massive amounts of imagery and detect objects because humans just can't keep up. We received an overwhelming response from our free Ai ready dataset and have provided it directly to the United States and nato allies.
Alexandr Wang And it's been downloaded over 2000 times by Ai companies, researchers, developers and Gi practitioners. Ai can also be used for change detection. Simply put, algorithms can constantly monitor imagery, and notify a human to investigate further if there's a change or a movement. It's clear that Ai is increasingly powering warfare And based on the rate of progress in the Ai field, I predict that in 10 years, it will be the dominant force. This disinformation and misinformation are already huge problems.
Alexandr Wang And this technology is only gonna make it worse. Tools like Chat Have enabled Ai to generate imagery, text, audio, video, code, and even reason. These tools can generate realistic looking and realistic sounding content, which on top of bot run social media accounts, will make it nearly impossible to identify disinformation. Misinformation online. Bad actors can use these tools to super charge misinformation and propagate false, China already uses disinformation campaigns and social media manipulation heavily in Taiwan, particularly during elections.
Alexandr Wang Or take Russia's propaganda machine, which in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, created a deep fake of Ukrainian presence Z, calling for Ukrainian troops to surrender. This deep fake was easy to spot, but the next 1 may not be. This also takes place within our borders. From social media algorithm manipulation, to advertising micro targeting and geo fencing, to deep fix politicians and bot run social media accounts. The United States is not excused from ex, disinformation and misinformation.
Alexandr Wang These tools are universally accessible at lower or no cost. Mean they can be employed by anyone anywhere to undermine the san entity of democracy globally. However, all hope is not lost, If we properly invest into data infrastructure and data preparation, all this can be avoided. Deter is nothing new to military thinking. As we saw in World war 2 with the atomic bomb, it was a primary factor in deter foreign an adversaries from going nuclear war for more than 6 decades, because the stakes of going war with such a technology were simply too high.
Alexandr Wang We're likely to see a new calculus emerge with Ai, It's on uncharted territory, nobody knows what it'll look like or the toilet will take? How do we know if our Ai is better than our adversaries? We won't. But 1 thing is clear, Ai can only be as powerful as the underlying data that is used to fuel its algorithms. Data will be a new kind of ammunition in the era of Ai warfare.
Alexandr Wang In the tech industry, we often talk about missions. They're often frivolous. Do they really change the world or save lives? This mission on the other hand really matters. The Ai war will define the future of our world and has the potential to shift the balance of diplomatic power.
Alexandr Wang It's clear that digital warfare is not some dystopian reality tucked away in a faraway future. It is taking place in the here and now. We cannot sit by the sidelines and wash the rise of an authoritarian regime. It is in moments like this. That technologists can either rise the challenge or stand idle?
Alexandr Wang I encourage my fellow technologist technologies to understand the austerity and severity of our times. And commit themselves to supporting National security. Well, I find it shocking that most American Ai companies have chosen not to support national security I do hope others join us. We must fight for the world we wanna live in. It's never mattered more.
Alexandr Wang