NATO has launched an artificial intelligence initiative to provide a technological advantage

WASHINGTON – Two NATO agencies recently launched an artificial intelligence initiative to better understand the technology and its potential military applications.

More than 80 AI experts, researchers and academics from the United States and other member states are involved in an undertaking known as the Strategic Horizon Scan, compiled by the NATO Science and Technology Organization and the NATO Communications and Information Agency.

An introductory meeting and seminar was held this month in The Hague, the Netherlands, where the data science and artificial intelligence facilities of the NCI are located.

“AI is one of the key emerging and destructive technologies identified by NATO as vital to maintaining its technological advantage,” said NATO chief scientist Brian Wells. said in a statement. “Working together, the WTO and the NCI are able to bring together global experts to ensure that the best scientific expertise is available to advise NATO and its allies and partners on the latest scientific developments in this field.

NATO’s guarantee of collective defense and the superiority of numbers, both on the battlefield and in the laboratory, have been much debated in the wake of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine and subsequent applications for membership from Finland and Sweden.

NATO ministers accepted the alliance’s proposal in October the first artificial intelligence strategy of its kindwhich describes the capability as “changing the global defense and security environment” and offering “an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen our technological advantage, but will also escalate the speed of the threats we face”.

The strategy emphasizes the responsible use of AI for protection on six principles: legality; responsibility and accountability; clarity and traceability; reliability; controllability; and mitigating bias.

The artificial intelligence framework and other guidelines developed by the United States and its defense community use a similar approach.

NATO allies in 2019 agreed to focus on seven emerging and destructive technologies, data, computing and AI. Assuring that there are shared standards and that the systems will work with systems will be crucial to success, officials said.

“One of the big challenges as we enter this new phase of destructive technology is how to keep all allies on the same anthem when it comes to communicating with each other, using the same technology, interoperable,” said David van Will. NATO’s assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges told Defense News in March 2021. “This is a large part of [of the strategy] and a big role that NATO has to play. “