ChatGPT: "Generative AI", what military role can it play in the future?

On January 28, 2023, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DIA) said it has included "generative AI" technologies like ChatGPT on its "technology watch list," indicating that the technology is likely to become a focus of development for the U.S. military, just like 5G, edge computing, and other technologies. ChatGPT has received so much attention that its military future should not be underestimated.

ChatGPT, whose full name is Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a chatbot model introduced by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab in the United States. The main structure of its core algorithm is the Transformer model that is currently dominant in the industry. Compared with Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), the main advantage of the Transformer model is its ability to capture global information and perform parallel computation for processing and analyzing large structured datasets for natural language processing tasks.

As a result, it is able to carry out conversations by understanding and learning human language, as well as interacting according to the context of the chat, truly chatting and communicating like a human, and even completing tasks such as writing emails, video scripts, copywriting, translating, coding, and writing papers.

What exactly is generative AI technology?

The so-called generative AI is a new branch of technology in the field of artificial intelligence, which refers to AI that learns to extract the kernel features of objects from data through various machine learning methods, and then generates new and completely original content.

From the development of AI, generative AI is a new branch of technology that emerged on the way from weak AI to strong AI/general AI.

ChatGPT and its iterations are essentially artificial intelligence language models based on human natural language. It uses large data as raw material, and through intensive training and deep learning, it has a feedback and error correction mechanism similar to a neural network. It is able to create new content based on the specific needs of users, automating complex tasks such as writing texts, articles, coding, as well as drawing and editing videos.

ChatGPT, as an emerging product of human-computer dialogue model, has undergone leapfrog technical iterations and has sparked a global discussion on how AI will assist human work in the future, while the discussion on its application in the military is extremely lively.

What military roles could ChatGPT play in the future?

In the future of information-based intelligent warfare, AI is being used at all levels, and ChatGPT is based on natural language processing and machine learning technologies that can automatically learn and understand text, and can generate human-like text.

This particular capability can be used for a wide variety of military tasks, such as natural language generation, natural language transformation, rapid and accurate threat assessment, tactical decision support, and other scenarios.

The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency has placed "generative AI" technology, represented by ChatGPT, on its "Technology Watch List," which is a step-by-step process to advance information technology in the military.

In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released the DoD Data Strategy, which clearly positions data as a strategic asset and proposes the vision of "making DoD a data-centric organization that uses data at scale to gain operational advantage and improve efficiency".

Since ChatGPT's potential military use is not to be taken lightly, what weighty "roles" might it play in the military with its capabilities?

Virtual staff officers: improve the efficiency and shorten the time of decision making

Front-line informants: intelligence gathering and analysis, cyber risk assessment

Software engineers: iterate military software and improve office efficiency

Variety of instructors: support military operations and assist military training