WASHINGTON: Forget Uber, Waymo and Tesla: the next big name in self-driving vehicles could be the Pentagon. “We’re going to have self-driving vehicles in theatre for the Army before we’ll have self-driving cars on the streets,” Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told lawmakers at a hearing on Capitol Hill this month. “But the core technologies will be the same.”
The stakes for the military are high. According to Griffin, 52% of casualties in combat zones can been attributed to military personnel delivering food, fuel and other logistics. Removing people from that equation with systems run on artificial intelligence could reduce injuries and deaths significantly, he added.
“You’re in a very vulnerable position when you’re doing that kind of activity,” Griffin said. “If that can be done by an automated unmanned vehicle with a relatively simple AI driving algorithm where I don’t have to worry about pedestrians and road signs and all of that, why wouldn’t I do that?”
The military’s autonomous vehicles won’t roam regulation-free just because they may be headed toward battlefields, according to Karlyn Stanley, a researcher and lawyer at the RAND Corp. “The regulatory structure here in the US and the countries where the US may be sending troops are very different,” Stanley said. “How autonomous vehicles are going to be regulated — in terms of safety, cybersecurity, privacy and liability — those are going to be critical issues” the Pentagon will have to address as well, she added.