AI in Defence: A New Paradigm

Ashish Kansal

Most Artificial Intelligence (AI) enthusiasts, if not all, hold the notion that AI is a recent development. Not many know or realise that decades have gone into bringing this wonderful technological marvel to its current repute. AI was being nurtured for its grand blooming, slowly and silently. For example, one of the laboratories run by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is called CAIR. It stands for Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and it was established not recently, not even in 2000s, but way back in 1986. Unbelievable, right? CAIR has been involved in research and development in the areas of AI, robotics, command and control, and information and communication security, leading to the development of mission critical products for battlefield secure communication and information management systems. This shows that Indian defence industry and planners, back in Eighties, were cognisant of the fact that the future belongs to AI and robotics. Hence, the set-up of a facility dedicated to the research of AI and AI-based solutions and their assimilation into the defence industry.

What’s the AI hype?

Now, why do we need AI? I mean, we are intelligent enough to create AI, then why? Answer lies not in the intelligence itself but the scale of its operation. The human mind is beautiful. It is an intellectual marvel, however, there is a limit to what a human mind can process and act upon. This is where AI comes into the picture. AI, with its high-end computing and numerous other technologies like automation, analytics, machine learning and natural language processing, can interpret trillions of texts and other types of data to give you the solution that you seek much faster than a human mind. In most cases, AI helps with decision making in real-time, which can be extremely critical in sensitive fields like healthcare, defence, disaster alerts, and even customer care (angry customers are a disaster too).

Today, not only CAIR but Weapons