Top Democrats are pushing for the Pentagon’s watchdog to conduct an investigation into recent issues with artificial intelligence on battlefields in Iran and the Pacific.
The lawmakers are pushing for the Inspector General’s office to begin an inquiry into a growing lack of confidence in “experimentation” with AI systems in active combat zones by the Defense Department and intelligence communities
Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware all signed a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton stressing the break in confidence.
Systems have that have included a “potential AI-hallucination in disseminated intelligence” the letter reads, stressing the risk amid attempts to hone in on military targets.
One situation may have resulted in an “aborted military interdiction operation” when Special Operations Command Pacific called off actions after reportedly misidentifying the material a Chinese vessel was carrying as a potential target. That event was first reported by CNN.
“A ’Move Fast and Break Things’ approach may serve for high-engagement memes on social media platforms, but it risks potentially grave operational miscalculations,” the senators wrote.
This “represents a serious threat to morale; recruitment; and foreign perceptions on the thresholds, accuracy, and justness of U.S. military action,” they wrote in the letter.
Mr. Warner is the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and has in recent months widely discussed the issue of AI in warfare, saying guardrails are needed on AI development without putting the U.S. at a disadvantage to China.
“While AI has appropriate applications in analytics and other fields, strong tradecraft standards should ensure that no disseminated intelligence product contains AI-generated errors,” the senators go on to say in the letter. “Particularly when such intelligence may serve as the impetus for a kinetic action against a nuclear-armed adversary.”
Mr. Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has also cautioned the speed at which AI is being adopted by the U.S. government.
“Adding some brakes and speed limits to AI development does not have to mean losing pace with the Chinese,” Mr. Reed said in a statement last week. “That excuse is both a failure of imagination and a failure of leadership and misunderstands the nature of the AI race itself.”
It is currently unclear whether the Pentagon Inspector General’s office will launch a separate investigation into AI targeting by the department.
A recent report by the office did highlight the use of AI in Operation Epic Fury, including the “kill chain” that is allegedly responsible for a strike on an Iranian school that killed 123 children.
A United Nations report released last week on those attacks found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that the United States committed a war crime” in killing the civilians at the Tree of Tayyiba Elementary School in Minab.
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