US defense officials are considering how generative artificial intelligence systems could assist with battlefield targeting decisions, with plans to feed a list of possible targets into a Pentagon fielded system designed for classified settings. In this envisioned workflow, humans might then ask the system to analyze the information and prioritize the targets, before remaining responsible for checking and evaluating the results and recommendations. Commercial chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok are described as potential tools that could sit at the center of high stakes military decision making, signaling a deeper integration of commercial artificial intelligence platforms into defense operations.
At the same time, internal tensions over which artificial intelligence models the US military should trust are growing more visible. The Pentagon’s chief technology officer has claimed that Anthropic’s Claude would “pollute” the defense supply chain, blaming what he characterized as a “policy preference” embedded in the model, and Anthropic is reported to be reeling from OpenAI’s “compromise” with the Department of Defense. Beyond the United States, Ukraine is offering its battlefield data to allies for artificial intelligence training so they can use it to improve drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles, underscoring how wartime data is becoming a strategic asset for defense related artificial intelligence development.
The newsletter round up highlights a wider reshaping of technology under geopolitical and social pressure. Meta has postponed its latest artificial intelligence launch after it fell short of rival models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, while Western artificial intelligence models are described as having “failed spectacularly” on agriculture in the Global South because they are not trained on local data. A landmark social media addiction trial is nearing its conclusion and will determine whether platforms are liable for harms caused to children, while artificial intelligence companions are framed as a new phase of digital addiction. The ongoing Ukraine Russia war is also spurring new military focused tech ventures in Eastern Europe, including Latvian startup Global Wolf Motors, whose once doubted military scooters were rapidly adopted for front line and reconnaissance missions after Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, illustrating how civilian technologies are being repurposed for emerging military needs.
