EXCLUSIVE: The Pentagon Wants More AI. One CEO Says That Could Go Very Wrong

Relying too heavily on internet-connected commercial AI could introduce dangerous new vulnerabilities into warfare, a top executive told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview.

Artificial intelligence will inevitably become deeply embedded in military decision-making, but allowing general-purpose systems to replace human judgment rather than support warfighters could create serious risks, according to Tyler Saltsman, co-founder and CEO of EdgeRunner AI. Those risks have already surfaced as the Pentagon races to become an “AI-first” force, with an AI-assisted intelligence report this spring falsely flagging a Chinese vessel as carrying nuclear-weapons-related components and nearly triggering a U.S. operation to board the ship, according to the Department of War.

OpenAI announced in February that ChatGPT would become available through GenAI.mil, the department’s secure enterprise AI platform used by roughly 3 million military and civilian personnel, according to the company.

Saltsman instead advocates for smaller, locally operated AI models trained specifically for military missions, including systems developed by companies such as his own.

EdgeRunner develops military-specific AI designed to run locally without an internet connection and has secured a research agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory, raised $17.5 million for on-device military AI and won a Space Force contract to develop service-specific AI agents, according to the company.

“Workforces and leaders need to be trained and educated on when to use artificial, certain types of artificial intelligence, and when not to,” Justin Lynch, senior director for defense at the Special Competitive Studies Project, told the DCNF. “The example that’s in the news right now is the near-miss issue that we had with the Chinese ship that was … falsely flagged as carrying components of a nuclear weapons program.”

“According to public-facing reports right now, it looks like an analyst used a chatbot to help them generate that report. So this is a good instance where that’s not a tool that was designed for the targeting process necessarily,” Lynch said. “It wasn’t an autonomous weapon system. It wasn’t something that was made for targeting the way that we would have a specialized focus AI targeting tool. It was a chatbot, which probably shouldn’t have been used in the way that it was being used.”

While it has not yet been achieved by AI developers, Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) could be the next step in AI development and would carry its own dangers that dwarf the current concerns surrounding AI.

“ASI, if it were to come online, is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, full stop,” Saltsman told the DCNF. “But they’ll still continue to march towards it, and I disagree with that.”