It has been argued that, through its Vision 2030 plan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the first country in the world to embed artificial intelligence in its own national progress roadmap. Spanning industry development, economic growth, sustainability and digital influence, the use of AI is seen as key to the success of each strategic imperative.
Forbes recently confirmed that, under Saudi Vision 2030, the country is keen to partner with leading global companies in the field of AI, subsequently signing a series of agreements with international tech companies at the Global AI Summit held in Riyadh in 2022.
And, indeed, BAE Systems Digital Intelligence has already started exploring opportunities for cyber, digital and AI to align with the KSA government’s drive towards economic diversification.
But what about defence?
Driven by increased computing power and more advanced models, we have now reached a point where AI is getting close to accurately representing human decision making. This presents a tremendous opportunity for the defence sector if AI is adopted responsibly – for the right applications and with appropriate governance.
However, to apply AI and machine learning through this lens of defence, Saudi Arabia must once again forge ahead go where other countries have so-far struggled, by mastering operationalisation.
AI in defence: the next step
Operational service in the context of AI is critical to defence as it displays a level of connectivity, data proficiency and real-time decision advantage that is unattainable through manual means.
In its essence, AI replicates how we make decisions. It supports and augments human activity, and through a military lens it reduces the information burden on users. This could play out in the form of decision-making during conflict or crisis scenarios, automatically recognising objects from images or video to support analysis, analysing vast amounts of defence data, detecting imminent equipment failure, and automating defensive weapon response.
As such, around the world, defence and industry have formed partnerships such as those laid out by Saudi Arabia at the Global AI Summit, to establish specific science and technology programmes. These typically result in proofs of concept demonstrated in labs, within constrained scenarios and by using limited sample data.
The next step for AI in the context of defence, and especially for Saudi Arabia to keep ahead of the global AI curve, is to operationalise these AI models, ensuring that they are embedded in how people work and in-line with specific, set objectives.
This means making the models robust enough to manage the scale and complexities of operational scenarios before integrating it to users’ platforms in a reliable, assured and responsible way. Globally, there are only a relatively small number of examples that have so far been able to achieve that.
Operationalising AI: data, application and trust
Another opportunity for Saudi Arabia through its proactive approach to AI adoption is to overcome the expectation gap – a further challenge that has traditionally been faced by both government and industry so far. The expectation being that operationalisation is just a natural next step beyond technical capability. However, this isn’t the case. Operationalising takes time and is as much about process and people than it is the technology.
In altering mindsets and approaches, Vision 2030 should be well equipped to fill this expectation gap. Actions taken so far include the setup of the Saudi Data and AI Authority, which later announced the National Strategy for Data and AI (NSDAI) in 2020. There has also been the creation of the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI), which is specifically targeted towards building partnerships, improving strategy and addressing market gaps.
As an ecosystem, a first area of concern should be around data itself. Vast quantities of data are required to successfully build AI models, as they learn how we make decisions from historical, tagged data. This requires an ability to capture the right data and make it available to the right people through more open and transparent sharing models.
From more practical standpoints, another challenge is how to deploy AI into operational systems. Some AI systems need to be deployed outside centralised IT platforms – for example into a plane, tank or ship. This is partly a technical integration challenge that defence suppliers can help with. It’s also a programme challenge, however, needing to find an agile and effective way of changing AI models within critical and long-lived platforms.
Potentially the biggest operational challenge, however, is around trust. If defence does not trust its AI models as being safe, accurate and reliable, then they will not be used. Whether users accept AI depends on how well it performs, how seamlessly it fits into their ways of working, and whether it is transparent. There is a big cultural change element required here, putting the onus on user training and the effective design of how humans and computers work together to make decisions.
Saudi Arabia and AI: futures intertwined
Encouragingly, a culture change is precisely what Saudi Arabia is encouraging as we move towards 2030. A culture of progress across industry, sustainability, social upliftment and economic diversification that can be enabled and accelerated by the use of AI.
To pave the way for artificial intelligence to make its mark in these areas, and critically in the area of national defence, BAE Systems is helping from a technical and operationalisation perspective. However, we are also helping to put in place guardrails to ensure AI’s use is safe, responsible, and in line with defence policies. This should be underpinned by an assurance process to assess AI’s performance and impact in operational use and an ethical framework to ensure the proportionate use of technology.
Ultimately, AI has so much to offer defence in terms of capability, matching potential adversaries, and for driving cultural and technology change. Saudi Arabia is already turning to global partners to leverage this offering, and not just from larger entities. SMEs, just as they will in the KSA’s wider Vision 2030 trajectory, will play a huge role in driving innovation and edging AI closer to operationalisation.
Naturally, there may still be many more challenges to overcome, but there can be no doubt that the future of defence is looking increasingly AI-driven. Just like the future of Saudi Arabia.