U.S. Military Wants to Bring Allies into AI Fold.

• Author: Harper, Jon
• Position: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The Defense Department has kicked off a new initiative to bring like-minded nations together to work on AI policies and capabilities.

In September, the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center hosted the inaugural AI Partnership for Defense meeting with military officials from 13 nations including: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Israel, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The two-day gathering focused on AI ethical principles and best practices for implementing them.

Alka Patel, head of the AI ethics team at JAIC, deemed the event a success. Some of the countries participating have already developed their own AI ethics principles while others are in the process of creating theirs, she noted.

"There was alignment in terms of the need for democratic values, norms to be really at the heart of how we design, develop, deploy and use AI technology," she said in an interview. "It was really encouraging to hear that conversation and have that robust dialogue."

Interoperability with allies has long been a key tenet of U.S. defense policy from a technology perspective.

"With the allies, how do we again align on interoperability of principles?" Patel said. "The next question for me that I would like to explore and see where this goes further is thinking through, alright, can we agree on, for example, specific tools or processes as we think about AI technology development? How can we collectively advance our shared interests to really think through how we shape the future when it comes to cooperation and defense given where we are with this technology?"

JAIC plans to host additional multinational meetings on these topics.

Experts outside of government have given the Pentagon high marks for how it is addressing ethical issues surrounding AI.

"The U.S. military is far ahead of other countries in thinking through these challenges," said Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. "The DoD is again at the forefront of thinking about AI principles... and I think the U.S. military deserves a lot of credit in that regard."

Reaching consensus with allies and partners about how to design, build and deploy AI in a military context is one thing. But bringing adversaries such as Russia and China into an international framework that would govern the use of AI capabilities is another, analysts say.

Peter W. Singer, a strategist and senior fellow...