Is India Getting Ready for a Robot War?

We all remember the Terminator movies. In these movies, an Artificial Intelligence called Skynet running military defence system takes over the world and is trying to eliminate all humans. During the recent years, real military AI systems are being developed by a number of countries like the U.S. and China. Now India is also trying to get ready for the future of warfare.

^{Image Terminator 2: Judgement Day}

India’s Ministry of Defense has put together a 17 strong task force to investigate possibilities and strategies for using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies in military and national security applications. The task force is lead by N Chandrasekaran who is chairman of the holding company Tata Sons. The group will be focusing on a number of fields, ranging from developing autonomic military robots to defence against cyber attacks.

Currently, India’s military is strong, but not very high tech. In order to achieve its vision, the Indian government will have to provide a lot of investment into the new technology.

A military spokesman said, "the task force will make recommendations on how to make India a significant power in AI, in terms of both offensive and defensive needs, especially in aviation, naval, land systems, cyber, nuclear and biological warfare arenas. Initial tenders or RFIs (requests for information) will be floated over the next two years on dual-use AI capabilities". The term dual-use stands for technology that can be used in a civilian context but can also be weaponised.

Developing these kinds of technologies is not without problems. Whatever you might think of warfare and the military in general, creating autonomous machines that decide which human life to end, raises serious ethical problems.