So, first, find yourself a data scientist your clients can rely upon. Second, just how nimble should we be? Reasonable sources claim AI progress is unlikely to slow down but also that AI has only a 0.4% chance of transformative change by 2043. This explains some of the disconnect: Engines of Power: Electricity, AI, and General Purpose Military Transformations. In this paper released in February by Oxford University researchers, the authors analogize AI to electricity, as a profound (military) general technological change. Read the entire paper, it’s fascinating …
… but here are some notes:
Early predictions of electrification (like AI) read as singular, narrow, and fantastical:
“A 1911 edition of Technical World magazine painted a particularly vivid vision of what electric-powered warfare would look like in 1950:”
“[…] darting, invisible, all-penetrating currents of electricity; devastating waves of electricity, or of some more powerful force, flashing over hundreds of miles consuming all that comes within their scourging blast. Guns, explosives, and projectiles will sink into the past, even as have the bow and arrow, giving [their] place to howling [electrical] elements clashing under man’s direction.”
“[S]peculation about how AI will transform military affairs places [equally] excessive emphasis on the narrow effects of weapon systems.”
Electrification (like AI) instead has: Broad Impact Pathways + Industrial Productivity Spillovers
“For Electrical World, the mayor of Kansas City captured the accumulated impact of electricity across a broad range of systems by 1890:”
“[Electricity] now not only guards the vessel from the inventions of the enemy, but aims and fires the guns, illuminates the sights that the aim may be sure, discharges torpedoes, measures her speed, is the most successful motor for submarine boats, and renders possible a system of visible telegraphy by which communications may be flashed against the clouds and understood at a distance of sixty miles.”
“All the forts in New York harbor were upgraded with dynamos for searchlights in 1898.”
“By 1914, around half the British battlefleet had [electric] director firing, and all had centralized control with transmitting stations.”
“Crucially, electrification enabled mass production, [...] For example, Britain possessed only 154 airplanes at the outbreak of WWI, but British aircraft factories were producing 30,000 planes per year by the end of the war. Access to cheap, plentiful electricity drove these surges.”
“[Our] theory suggests that [] linkages to a wide base of AI engineering talent, rather than star researchers or cutting-edge technical capabilities, are crucial to adapting generalized models to a variety of [AI] applications.”
Electrification had delayed effects:
“[E]ven the early movers did not achieve widespread adoption until right before WWI.”
“Among later adopters, widespread adoption did not take place until the interwar period or after WWII.”
“Indeed, some of the most significant military applications of electricity did not emerge until the 1940s.”
“The delayed diffusion of military electrification was due to the need for significant organizational adaptations and skills upgrading.”
“[T]he US Navy took about fifteen years to fully integrate the radio into its operations, as senior naval officers saw the radio as a direct threat to their authority onboard ships.”
Long timelines for an AI socio-industrial (military) transformation?
“The current wave of AI development started with the deep learning revolution in the early 2010s, so if AI follows the same timeline as electricity, a prolonged period of gestation could extend until around the 2050s.”
“[However,] this expectation can be affected by other factors, including the possibility that the general process of technological adoption is accelerating.”
“As only a decade has passed since critical breakthroughs in deep learning, any attempt to foreordain the ultimate strategic impacts of AI should be met with deep skepticism.”