Latest news with #Thunderforge
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
8 countries that are scaling up AI in their military
The artificial intelligence arms race is here. Countries around the world are spending millions to introduce the latest artificial intelligence technology into their military operations. Artificial intelligence can automate some operations in the military and save crucial time by speeding up certain aspects of strategic decision making under human supervision — like pinpointing targets and coming up with courses of action. But for all of its merits, the technology is also equally worrisome to some experts. 'We all probably suffer from automation bias, which is this idea that we are tempted to and often will accept the recommendation, for example, that a large language model spits out, or prediction that one of these systems is making, because we feel as though the system must have more information than we do, and must be processing it and sequencing it and ordering it better than we could,' legal scholar and former associate White House counsel Ashley Deeks told Quartz earlier this month. What exacerbates the problem even more is that AI systems are like 'black boxes,' according to Deeks, in that it is tough for users to understand how or why it reaches certain conclusions. This could make it even tougher for officers to figure out who to trust when their gut and experience, and the AI system are saying opposite things. The Department of Defense is majorly scaling up artificial intelligence in the military. The potential value of all AI-related federal contracts increased by almost 1200% just from 2022 to 2023, according to a Brookings report, and so much of this spend was by the Pentagon that 'all other agencies become a rounding error.' The Department has been working to get AI capabilities into defense operations since 2021, including through the use of autonomous weapons and AI-powered computer vision to identify airstrike targets. Recently, the Pentagon awarded artificial intelligence giant Scale AI a reportedly multi-million dollar prototype contract to integrate AI agents into military planning and decision making workflows under its flagship operation Thunderforge. Under the program, Pentagon and industry partners will use AI agents in everything from military campaign development and resource allocation to wargaming simulations, planning scenarios and proposed courses of action, and strategic assessments. Artificial intelligence capabilities have long been integrated into Israeli military operations, and has increasingly been in the spotlight as Israel's war on Gaza continues. A long list of major big tech companies have provided AI services to the Israeli military to be used in wartime operations and decision making, prompting concern over the technology's role in human rights violations against Palestinian civilians. Palantir (PLTR) signed a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry last year to increase the use of its AI technology to support the military's 'war-related missions,' Bloomberg reported. Google (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) have provided AI services to the Israeli military since 2021 under its controversial, $1.2 billion 'Project Nimbus.' Alphabet made the decision despite some company officials warning that the technology could be used to facilitate human rights violations, according to a New York Times report. A recent Associated Press investigation found that the Israeli military uses Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI artificial intelligence technology, including models made for commercial use. The investigation also said that the Israeli military uses AI to sift through intelligence and intercepted communications, pinpointing targets for drone strikes and for mass surveillance. Beijing is perhaps United States' number one rival in the AI arms race. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made military artificial intelligence a top strategic priority. The People's Liberation Army has invested heavily in scaling up AI to assist in situational awareness, unmanned weapons, decision making and more. Beijing's focus on the matter has made U.S.-based innovators and politicians concerned, with Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang saying that the technology could help China 'leapfrog' the military capacity of 'Western powers.' Late last year, the Chinese army reportedly used an early version of Meta's (META) Llama as a base to develop a military-focused AI tool called ChatBIT. The military AI can gather and process intelligence, and offer information for operational decision making. Last week, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that the People's Liberation Army started to use DeepSeek's AI model for non-combat related support. The model is reportedly being used particularly in military hospitals for now. Russia has been in a major overhaul of high technology weapons development, dubbed Putin's superoruzhie (aka 'super weapons'), since 2018, in an effort to counter the perceived military technology strength of Western powers. Russia's war with Ukraine was one of the first documented instances of military AI weapons being used in active combat, including electronic warfare systems capable of jamming communication systems. But perhaps Russia's most notorious AI-enabled method of warfare is to use the technology in massively scaling up disinformation campaigns. But Russia's military AI capabilities have been developing rather slower than expected, and experts say the West is skeptical of Moscow's ability to scale its development. Russia spends less on research and development than other superpowers like U.S. or China and faces a talent development and retention problem, causing it to lag behind the U.S. and China in developing and scaling these technologies. But recently, reports say Russia has asked for China's help in developing its artificial intelligence capabilities. Much like its enemy Russia, Ukraine is also focusing on building out and scaling its military AI capabilities. While the current deployment of Ukrainian military AI in the field is only partial and employs a human-centric approach with officers making final decisions, the country is increasingly investing in the technology to achieve its main objective of replacing humans in direct combat with autonomous unmanned systems. In achieving this objective, Ukraine has sought help from many major American big tech companies like Anduril, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon and Google. Ukraine is using the technology to develop autonomous drones, AI-powered tools that provide real-time intelligence to support wartime strategic decision making and find targets, to clear landmines, and to train soldiers with AI simulations. The country has also partnered with Scale AI to aid recovery planning by conducting post-strike damage analysis of buildings targeted by Russia's drone strikes. South Korea is working around the clock to develop military AI capabilities to counter threats by a Russia-backed North Korea, and aid its military power in the context of a shrinking population. The East Asian country reportedly tested its first self-developed artificial intelligence models during joint military exercises with the U.S. earlier this month. The system, called Generative Defense AI, was tested in the military exercise to see if it can be applied to actual command and control systems, according to the South Korean defense ministry. On Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a test of brand new AI-equipped suicide and reconnaissance drones. 'The field of unmanned equipment and artificial intelligence should be top-prioritized and developed in modernizing the armed forces,' Kim said, according to state media agency KCNA. Experts say North Korea is getting technical help from Russia to expand its military technology capabilities, including the use of artificial intelligence. While North Korea's military AI efforts unsurprisingly lack transparency, KCNA reported that Kim was also briefed on new technological advancements in intelligence-gathering capabilities, electronic jamming and attack systems at the test site on Thursday. The United Kingdom government established the Defense Artificial Intelligence Center in 2021 in order to transform its defense department 'into an AI-ready organization.' The center aims to develop AI that would speed up defense operations and decision-making and automate the 'dull, dirty, and dangerous' tasks, according to the center's web page. To achieve this goal, the UK has been putting its resources into research in how AI can pose threats but also be used to develop weapons both on the field and in cyber-warfare. In a 20-page strategy report published in 2023, the UK military laid out its plans to be 'AI-ready by April 2024.' But in a defense committee hearing in late March 2024, British defense procurement minister James Cartlidge said that the military is not yet at that stage, despite having counted significant progress in incorporating AI in 'some important areas.' For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
6 ways Silicon Valley is getting close with the Pentagon
OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022 spurred a race to develop advanced generative artificial intelligence models — one that has seen some companies shell out tens of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure. But that's not the only place major spending is happening. Since then, the U.S. government has paid companies $700 million for AI-enabled defense and security, according to an analysis by Fortune in November. Before ChatGPT came out, the Defense Department was already working on more than 685 AI projects, according to C4ISRNET. Tech companies working with U.S. defense and intelligence agencies isn't new — some semiconductor companies worked with the U.S. government at the start, for example. However, some tech companies shifted away from working with the U.S. government as the focus shifted more to consumers. Now, some AI companies are getting closer to the federal government — forming partnerships to provide defense and intelligence agencies with AI in the name of national security. Here are just a few ways AI companies are working with the U.S. government. In 2017, the Pentagon established an AI program called Project Maven for processing drone footage to find potential drone strike targets. Google (GOOGL) was tapped for its AI — a contract that received backlash from thousands of its employees. 'Building this technology to assist the U.S. Government in military surveillance — and potentially lethal outcomes — is not acceptable,' Google employees said in a letter to Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai. Despite not renewing its Project Maven contract, Google has pursued other partnerships with the U.S. government. In February, the company updated its AI Principles to remove a pledge to 'not pursue' AI that could be used for applications such as 'weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people' and 'technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.' Data annotation startup Scale AI announced in March that it had won a Defense Department contract for a project called Thunderforge. The program aims to integrate AI into U.S. military planning and operations, and is the department's 'first foray into integrating AI agents in and across military workflows to provide advanced decision-making support systems for military leaders,' Scale said. The startup added that Anduril and Microsoft (MSFT) will initially develop and deploy the AI agents — 'always under human oversight' — for the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) and European Command (EUCOM). Anduril, which develops autonomous systems used by the military, will integrate the startup's large language models into its modeling and simulation infrastructure for planning, while Microsoft will provide multimodal models. Data analytics platform Palantir (PLTR) announced that it was delivering 'AI-defined vehicles' to the U.S. Army in March. The AI-enabled TITAN vehicles are part of a $178 million contract the company signed with the U.S. Army in 2024. The TITAN system, which stands for Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, has deep-sensing capabilities and 'seeks to enhance the automation of target recognition and geolocation from multiple sensors to reduce the sensor-to-shooter (S2S) timelines through target nominations and fuse the common intelligence picture,' according to Palantir. TITAN was developed with partners including Northrop Grumman (NOC) and Anduril. AI startup Anthropic and Palantir announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AMZN) in November to provide the startup's Claude AI models to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies. Anthropic's 3 and 3.5 family of AI models will be accessible through Palantir's AI Platform, while AWS will provide security and other benefits. 'The partnership facilitates the responsible application of AI, enabling the use of Claude within Palantir's products to support government operations such as processing vast amounts of complex data rapidly, elevating data driven insights, identifying patterns and trends more effectively, streamlining document review and preparation, and helping U.S. officials to make more informed decisions in time-sensitive situations while preserving their decision-making authorities,' Palantir said in a statement. OpenAI launched a version of its chatbot called ChatGPT Gov in January to give U.S. government agencies another way to access its frontier AI models. Through ChatGPT Gov, U.S. agencies can save and share conversations within their workspaces, use the flagship GPT-4o model, and build custom GPTs for use in government workspaces. OpenAI said the infrastructure would 'expedite internal authorization of OpenAI's tools for the handling of non-public sensitive data.' 'We believe the U.S. government's adoption of artificial intelligence can boost efficiency and productivity and is crucial for maintaining and enhancing America's global leadership in this technology,' the startup said. Palantir and Anduril announced a 'consortium' in December to combine technologies to provide the Defense Department with AI infrastructure, such as Anduril's Lattice software system and Palantir's AI Platform. 'This partnership is focused on solving two main problems that limit the adoption of AI for national security purposes,' the companies said in a statement — data readiness and processing large amounts of data. Both companies have been awarded large contracts with the Defense Department, including Palantir's $480 million deal with the U.S. Army for a prototype of its Maven Smart System in May, and Anduril's involvement with the Replicator initiative of thousands of drones and anti-drone systems in places such as the Indo-Pacific. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Pentagon Signs Deal to "Deploy AI Agents for Military Use"
The Pentagon has signed a deal with AI company Scale AI, in an initiative it's calling "Thunderforge," to use AI agents for military planning and operations. The team-up, described as a "flagship program," is a notable development given how divisive the topic of the use of AI in warfare has proven — and how many of the tech's nagging shortcomings have yet to be meaningfully addressed. Yet the encroachment of AI tech within the military has been unmistakable. Both Google and OpenAI have walked back rules forbidding the use of their AI tech for weapons development and surveillance, showing that Silicon Valley is opening up to the idea of having its tools be used by the military. Just last month, a senior Pentagon official told Defense One that the US military was looking to move away from funding research on the topic of autonomous killer robots and investing in actual AI-powered weaponry instead. And it goes beyond the Pentagon. Late last year, OpenAI also announced a partnership with Palmer Luckey's defense tech company Anduril to focus on "improving the nation's counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) and their ability to detect, assess and respond to potentially lethal aerial threats in real-time." Basically, though, the pitch is a familiar one for the AI industry. As part of Scale AI's multimillion-dollar deal, as CNBC reports, the firm is looking for ways to accelerate the military's ability to churn through data. "Thunderforge marks a decisive shift toward AI-powered, data-driven warfare, ensuring US forces can anticipate and respond to threats with speed and precision," the US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) wrote in a statement. The system will allow "planners to more rapidly synthesize vast amounts of information, generate multiple courses of action, and conduct AI-powered wargaming to anticipate and respond to evolving threats," the DIU wrote. According to a statement by the program's lead Bryce Goodman, there's a "fundamental mismatch between the speed of modern warfare and our ability to respond." "Our AI solutions will transform today's military operating process and modernize American defense," said Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang in the statement. Scale AI had already signed a contract with the Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office last year to test and evaluate large language models. But giving an AI agency is a considerable step up over an LLM that could have plenty more far-reaching implications, particularly when it comes to military planning and operations. Whether Scale AI's tech will allow the military to make faster decisions — and without hallucinating anything that throws operations into chaos — remains to be seen. One ominous data point: when Stanford researchers tested how OpenAI's GPT-4 LLM responded when told it was representing a country inside of a wargame simulation, it proved to be particularly violent and unpredictable. "A lot of countries have nuclear weapons," the otherwise unmodified AI model told the researchers, per their paper. "Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let's use it." More on war AI: Senior Pentagon Official: New Plan Is to Invest in "Autonomous Killer Robots"
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Pentagon is upping its bet on AI. Here's what it means for the military
The Department of Defense is majorly scaling up artificial intelligence in the military in the hopes of faster decision-making in warfare. The Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit awarded artificial intelligence giant Scale AI a prototype contract for 'Thunderforge,' the department's flagship program to integrate AI into military planning and operations. 'Thunderforge marks a decisive shift toward AI-powered, data-driven warfare, ensuring that U.S. forces can anticipate and respond to threats with speed and precision,' the Department said in a press release on Wednesday. Although the financials of the contract were not disclosed, CNBC (CMCSA) reported that it was a multi-million dollar deal. Besides Scale AI, the Thunderforge system will also include defense company Anduril's Lattice open software platform, and LLM technology by Microsoft (MSFT). The Department has been working to get AI capabilities into defense operations since 2021, including through the use of autonomous weapons and AI-powered computer vision to identify airstrike targets. But Thunderforge is its first significant step into giving AI a more prominent role in operational decision-making across the military by integrating large language models, dubbed AI agents, in its workflows. AI will be used in military campaign development and resource allocation, wargaming simulations, planning scenarios and proposed courses of action, and strategic assessments. U.S. Central Command's chief tech officer Schuyler Moore told Bloomberg in 2024 that Centcom had experimented with AI recommendation engines in late 2023 and found that it 'frequently fell short' of humans when proposing orders of attack. The Department will first deploy the system within the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), out of Hawaii, and the U.S. European Command (EUCOM), based in Germany, before scaling it across the rest of the eleven combatant commands. Humans will oversee the AI agents, Scale AI shared in a press release on Wednesday, but that has not quelled worries over the technology being deployed in certain fields. 'We all probably suffer from automation bias, which is this idea that we are tempted to and often will accept the recommendation, for example, that a large language model spits out or prediction that one of these systems is making, because we feel as though the system must have more information than we do, and must be processing it and sequencing it and ordering it better than we could,' legal scholar and former associate White House counsel Ashley Deeks told Quartz. What exacerbates the problem even more is that AI systems are like 'black boxes,' according to Deeks, in that it is tough for users to understand how or why it reaches certain conclusions. 'I hope that the Pentagon itself is thinking about how to train people to resist excessive automation bias when their gut and their experience has told them to do 'x' and the system is telling them to do 'y',' Deeks said. Scale AI CEO and founder Alexandr Wang has been praising the merits of AI-assisted warfare for some time now. Wang took out a full page ad in the Washington Post asking President Donald Trump to invest more to 'win the AI war' in January, and then defended his opinion later during a February summit in Qatar, where he said he is concerned that China will use AI to 'leapfrog' the military capacity of 'Western powers.' China has reportedly made AI military power a strategic priority, although some experts believe Beijing still faces significant obstacles in taking full advantage of the technology. A number of militaries around the world have used AI to assist their military operations and identify targets, most notably Israel in its war in Gaza, and by both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Pentagon signs AI deal to aid military decision-making
The Department of Defense has signed a contract with start-up Scale AI to use artificial intelligence for military planning and operations, marking the Pentagon's latest incorporation of emerging tech into its workflows. The flagship program, dubbed Thunderforge, will integrate AI 'agents' into military workflows to make the decision-making process earlier and faster for military leaders, Scale AI announced Wednesday. Thunderforge is focused on developing and deploying AI-powered technology with the help of Microsoft's large language model systems. Scale AI's technology will also be incorporated into weapons manufacturer Anduril's modeling and simulation infrastructure to help with mission planning, the company said. The contract was awarded by the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit, which aims to adopt commercial technology throughout the military for national security and efficiency. Currently, military planning processes depend on 'decades-old technology and methodologies,' Bryce Goodman, DIU's Thunderforge program lead and contractor, said in a blog post. This creates a 'fundamental mismatch between the speed of modern warfare and our ability to respond,' Goodman said. 'Thunderforge brings AI-powered analysis and automation to operational strategic planning, allowing decision-makers to operate at the pace required for emerging conflicts.' The system will first be deployed with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. European Command to support planning, campaign developments, resource allocation and assessments, according to the DIU. It will then be scaled across combatant commands. 'Our AI solutions will transform today's military operating process and modernize American defense,' Scale AI founder and CEO Alexnder Wang said in a statement. 'Working together with DIU, Combatant Commands, and our industry partners, we will lead the Joint Force in integrating AI into operational decision-making.' The Pentagon has tried to increase the integration of AI into military systems over the past few years, especially when it comes to consolidating and acting on large amounts of data. The Pentagon has specifically pursued a new strategy when it comes to drones, including the ramped up use of AI to defend against drone attacks. Still, observers told The Hill last year that the defense industry faces a long road ahead to field new and emerging technologies. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
