AI taking role of military commanders still a long way off, says Dutch Nobel Laureate Prof Gerardus ’t Hooft

Terming artificial intelligence (AI) to be still in its infancy, Dutch Nobel Laureate Prof Gerardus ’t Hooft said AI would take a long time to take over from human military commanders for conducting wartime operations.

Speaking on AI’s impact on various sectors in Mohali today, he said in a war, the side which employs more science would have the upper hand, but it is the ability to think and act differently that would prevail. “In war, it is the unexpected manoeuvers and unanticipated actions that matter and it could well take AI a thousand years to catch up,” he added. AI may not take over the battlefield in the near future.

AI is being increasingly used in the defence sector, as also other industries, to automate operations, carry out surveillance, predict scenarios and assist decision makers in adopting the appropriate course of action. Prof Hooft is a theoretical physicist and professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics with his thesis advisor, Martinus JG Veltman, for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions.

Will take 1,000 years

In war, it is the unexpected manoeuvers and unanticipated actions that matter and it could well take AI a thousand years to catch up. —Prof Gerardus ’t Hooft

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AI is also becoming an important element of gray zone warfare and the agencies concerned need to develop tools to protect the citizens from being targeted by cyber-attacks, psychological warfare and disinformation campaigns, he said. The Nobel Laureate added that while AI can be misused, it should be trained to recognise ethical boundaries. It should be like a zoo keeper, who knows everything about every animal and uses this knowledge wisely to protect both the animals as well as himself, he said.

On the possibility of human colonisation of space, Prof Hooft said the first ‘inhabitants’ of planetary bodies would be robots rather than humans as different kinds of robots would be able to withstand the extremes of space much better. Later, humans and robots would be able to co-exist in space, but beyond a certain distance, only robots would be able to travel as humans would not be able to cope up with speed and time factors involved.

Prof Hooft said AI is also one of the aspects in aviation, but cannot make operations fully automated till it is trained to foresee the unexpected and deal with any unforeseen situation when things go wrong.

Education, he said, was another arena where AI has immense applications. Though AI may not replace teachers in the near future, it can complement the role human staff and assist in logistical activities. AI tool scan also be developed to assist social scientists in research on human behaviour and societal trends, he said.