BEIJING – Chinese researchers believe that equipping nuclear submarineswith AI would improve their commanders’ thinking skills and their abilityto win undersea battles.

The developers of the new system believe that weeks and months spent in thecramped space of a submarine cause a great deal of psychological stresswhich could impair the commanding officers’ decision-making ability, theSouth China Morning Post wrote, citing a researcher involved in the program.

An AI decision-support system with “its own thoughts” would reduce thecommanding officers’ workload and mental burden. The program will imitatethe work of the human brain, but will be able to process way moreinformation and much faster.

[image: Quantum mechanics]In a combat situation, an AI assistant could support commanding officersby assessing the battlefield environment, providing insight into how oceansaline levels and water temperature might affect the accuracy of sonarsystems.

It could also help commanding officers estimate the risks and benefitsof certain combat maneuvers, even offering suggestions not consideredby the crew.

The system must have a simple structure to reduce its risk of failure, becompact and compatible with subs’ existing computer systems.

“It is like putting an elephant into a shoebox,” said the researcher, whowas speaking on condition of anonymity.

He added that even with the system of artificial intelligence installed,the size of submarine crews will not be reduced as “there must be a humanhand on every critical post.”

[image: Smartphone]Zhu Min, a researcher at the Institute of Acoustics with the ChineseAcademy of Sciences and a lead scientist in China’s deep water explorationprogram, fears, however, that important as technological progress isfor human society, there is still a risk that with a thinking systemlike this in place “we may have a runaway submarine with enough nuclearweapons to destroy a continent.”

Deng Zhidong, a computer science professor and AI scholar at Beijing’sTsinghua University, disagrees, arguing that the risk of AI-based machinesrebelling against human society simply does not exist, at least for now.

“An AI-powered machine is still a machine. It does not have a life. You canshut it down and shift to manual any time. It will be the same on a nuclearsubmarine,” Deng said.