Hegseth announces new AI and drone command

UAVs guided by artificial intelligence have become “the biggest battlefield revolution in generations,” the US Secretary of War has said The Pentagon will set up a new Autonomous Warfare Command to design, produce and field robotic systems across the military, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said in his ‘State of the Force’ address.The announcement comes as experts sound the alarm about the threat posed by military AI, saying that over-reliance on it could lead to the erosion of human critical thinking, increase the risk of accidental escalation due to the unpredictability of the decision-making by the algorithms and make warfare even more dangerous for civilians.During his speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Wednesday, Hegseth said that the AutoWarCom would be granted “service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.”“Drone warfare supercharged by SI-enabled targeting is the biggest battlefield revolution in generations,” he stressed.A day earlier, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order replacing the term “Artificial Intelligence” (“AI”) wi...