India Develops Advanced AI Army to Compete with China’s Military

India is constructing an artificial intelligence-powered army to confront more powerful adversaries. A recent report claims that the nation’s government has pledged to invest about £50 million in AI, most of which will go toward the army.

It is believed that the nation’s navy is currently creating aquatic robots to fight opponents in areas humans cannot access, having previously deployed a robot soldier in the form of a tiny, tank-like device that can fire guns at will.

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India is investing in this to stay competitive, but the report criticizes it and suggests it should be spending almost 30 times as much.

“This is a good initial step, but inadequate compared to our primary strategic challenger, China, which is spending more than 30 times this amount,” the Delhi Policy Group’s compilation states. Increased investments will be necessary if we want to stay ahead of the technological curve, mainly to support domestic industry players.

The paper also highlighted a few fairly alarming concerns that it believes AI may raise.

“The degree of autonomy that AI systems can be given and the necessity of keeping humans involved in the decision-making process raise clear ethical concerns. Nowadays, a lot of AI systems are used as “black boxes,” which means that human users have no easy way to understand how they make decisions.

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It was recently revealed that India’s army’s Signals Technology Evaluation and Adaptation Group had already begun to examine new “modern warfare” technology and that India was collaborating with the US to enhance its AI capabilities.

Pakistan is India’s greatest adversary, understandably enough, but according to a 2017 BBC World Service survey, Brazil ranks second in terms of “anti-Indian sentiment.”

France and Spain rounded out the top five, with China placing third.