AI in Future C2 – Who’s in Command When AI Takes Control?

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will become an increasingly dominant element of future Command and Control (C2) systems and organizations. In this paper we discuss how to make effective use of this technology in time-critical decision-making situations, as we classify the relationships between human decision maker; the AI system; and the task or situation at hand, along two dimensions: Automation and Autonomy. The former concerns the employment of AI to standardize and speed up the decision-making process (efficiency), without necessarily sacrificing accuracy or precision. The latter concerns the influence an AI system will have on the determination of the utility of the outcome of a decision-making process (effectiveness), relative to a human decision maker within the same process. Our research question is whether there is a trade-off between automation and autonomy when using AI to support decision-making in time-critical situations. In other words, can an AI system be trusted to make decisions that are both efficient and effective in time-critical situations, such as encountered by C2 systems?