Application progress of artificial intelligence in military confrontation

Artificial intelligence (AI), especially the rapid development of deep learning, has a profound impact on various industries and has continuously changed the traditional production methods and lifestyles. From passive learning with computing power to autonomous learning and enhanced learning, the development of machine intelligence is largely due to the innovation of the AI theory and practice. AI has also had a far-reaching impact on the military field, as it has provided modern warfare with new features such as intelligence, interconnectedness, and destructiveness. Winning in a military confrontation requires not only machine intelligence but also human wisdom. Therefore, human-machine collaboration would combine the strengths and complement the weaknesses of human and machine, which is the key to victory in the increasingly complex war environment. How to achieve a high degree of hybrid human–artificial intelligence to obtain a good result of “1+1>2” is also a problem that needs to be further explored in military confrontation. This paper reviewed the application of AI in military confrontation as the starting point and highlighted the important measures and achievements of representative countries in the use of AI technology in the military development process. Moreover, we analyzed the development status from the two perspectives of confrontation strategy and the three-tier architecture of the Internet of Things, revealed the shortcomings of using AI in the current military field, and analyzed the development trend of hybrid human–artificial intelligence in military confrontation. We also presented three possible technical schemes and detailed explanations and finally proposed future research directions. We believe that the future development trend of intelligent military may be based on the hybrid human–artificial intelligence, which will further improve the adaptability of machines to the combat environment and reveal the merits of the integration of human wisdom and machine intelligence; this integration may be the next step of AI research in military confrontation.