entire book - Chris Hables Gray

Military Computerdom [ 57 ]
access to research resources (Sanger, 1985). This dynamic has remained
unchanged into the mid-1990s. When federal budgets are cut it is not military
research that gets trimmed (Cordes, 1995).
Not only is the development of industrial and academic AI entangled
with military priorities, but political and military policy has become intertwined,
even twisted, with illusions about computerization.
Successes and Failures
Because the United States lost the Vietnam War some people said that
computerized high technology was useless. Because the United States won
the Gulf War some people said that the same technology is always victorious.
Neither assertion is true. A technology may be powerful, but unless it is
deployed at the right time in the right way it will not be useful as a weapon;
it might even do more harm than good if it leads to the wrong strategy. The
problem is that the reasons for using most weapons are often not logical or
utilitarian; sometimes they are emotional and political. This encourages
systematic misapplications leading to mistakes. The most common erroneous
judgments of high-tech weapons and logical systems involve either misestimating
their effectiveness or misapplying their power.
These errors include:
1. Overestimating the effectiveness of such weapons systems—the most
common error, as can be seen with strategic bombing in World War
II, the electronic battlefield in Vietnam and other deployments by
the U.S. military, and the USSR in Afghanistan
2. Underestimating their effectiveness—as the Arab military has consistently
misjudged Israeli avionic and drone technology
3. Not knowing when to use the technobgy—clearly seen in the over involvement
of Washington, D.C., in overseas actions because of
improved satellite communications
A review of the military's experience with computerized high technology
shows a number of successful cases, but also a shocking number
of failures.
Robotics, Automatic Manufacturing, and AI Maintenance
Prof. Bernard Roth of Stanford University, a leading robot researcher, surveyed
military robotics and concluded "it is extremely unlikely that autonomous
robots using the current technology or logical near-term developments
from this technology will be of any real military value" (1987, p. 6).