[ad_1]
Understanding artificial intelligence and how it relates to national security issues has become a top priority for military and government leaders in recent years. A new three-day custom program called “Artificial Intelligence for National Security Leaders” — AI4NSL for short — aims to educate leaders who may not have a technical background in the basics of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science and how these topics intersect. with national security.
“National security is fundamentally about two things: getting information from sensors and processing that information. These are two things that AI excels at. The AI4NSL class engages national security leaders in understanding how to take advantage of the benefits and opportunities that AI provides, as well as understand its potential negative consequences,” said Alexander Madry, MIT’s Cadence Design Systems Professor and one of the course’s faculty directors.
Organized jointly by the MIT School of Engineering, the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, and MIT Sloan Executive Education, AI4NSL graduated its fifth cohort in April. The course brings leaders from all branches of the US military, as well as some foreign military leaders from NATO, to the MIT campus, where they learn from faculty experts on various technical topics in artificial intelligence, as well as how to overcome organizational challenges. arise in this context.
“We decided to create a real executive education class on AI for senior national security leaders,” Madry says. “Over three days, we teach these leaders not only to understand what this technology is, but also how to adopt these technologies organizationally.”
The initial idea emerged from discussions with senior US Air Force (USAF) leaders and members of the Department of the Air Force (DAF)-MIT AI Accelerator in 2019.
According to Major John Radovan, deputy director of the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator, in recent years it has become clear that national security leaders need a deeper understanding of AI technologies and their impact on security, warfare and military operations. In February 2020, Radovan and his team at the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator began creating a one-on-one course to help guide senior leaders in discussions about artificial intelligence.
“This is the only course focused on AI specifically for national security,” says Radovan. “We didn’t want to make this course just for Air Force members — it had to be for all branches of the military. If we are going to operate as a joint force, we have to have the same vocabulary and the same mental models of how to use this technology.”
After a pilot program in collaboration with MIT Open Learning and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Radovan reached out to faculty from the School of Engineering and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, including Madry, to refine the course curriculum. They enlisted the help of colleagues and faculty at MIT Sloan Executive Education to refine the class’s curriculum and deliver content to its audience. The result of this cross-school collaboration was the new iteration of AI4NSL, which launched last summer.
In addition to providing participants with a basic overview of AI technologies, the course places a strong emphasis on organizational planning and implementation.
“What we wanted to do was create smart users at the command level. The idea was to present this content at a higher level so that people could understand the underlying frameworks that guide their thinking about the use and reception of this material,” says Roberto Fernandez, William F. Pounds Professor of Management and one of the. AI4NSL instructors as well as other course faculty director.
During the three-day course, instructors from MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and MIT Sloan School of Management will cover a wide range of topics.
The first half of the course begins with a basic overview of concepts including AI, machine learning, deep learning, and the role of data. Instructors also present the problems and pitfalls of using AI technologies, including the potential for adversarial manipulation of machine learning systems, privacy challenges, and ethical considerations.
In the middle of the second day, the course moves to examine the organizational perspective, helping participants consider how to effectively implement these technologies in their own units.
“What’s interesting about this course is how it’s formatted first around AI, machine learning, what data is and how it feeds AI, and then it gives participants a framework to go back to their units and create a strategy. It’s a piece of work,” says Col. Michel Goyette, director of the Army Strategic Education Program at the Army War College and AI4NSL participant.
During the course, breakout sessions give participants the opportunity to collaborate and problem-solve together in an exercise. These sessions build on each other as participants are exposed to new concepts related to AI.
“The breakout sessions were outstanding because they force you to network with people you don’t know, so the networking aspect is key. Anytime you can do more than just receive information and actually get into what you’re being taught, it really enhances the learning environment,” said Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, USAF Air Education and Training Command commander and AI4NSL participant. .
This spirit of teamwork, collaboration and bringing people from different backgrounds together permeates the three-day program. The AI4NSL classroom not only brings together national security leaders from all branches of the military, it also brings together faculty from three MIT schools.
“One of the most exciting things about this program is the overarching theme of collaboration,” says Rob Dietel, director of executive programs at the Sloan School of Management. “We draw not only from MIT Sloan faculty, but also from top faculty from the Schwarzman College of Computing and the School of Engineering. It’s great to be able to leverage the resources that are here on the MIT campus to really make it the most impactful program that we can.”
As new developments in generative AI, such as ChatGPT and machine learning, change the national security landscape, AI4NSL organizers will continue to update the curriculum to ensure it prepares leaders to understand the implications of their units.
“The pace of change in AI and national security is so fast now that it’s hard to keep up, and that’s part of the reason we created this program.” We brought in some of our world-class faculty from different parts of MIT to really address the changing dynamics of AI,” Dietel adds.
[ad_2]
Source link
