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During the meeting, the Chinese leader was photographed at the PLA Academy of Military Sciences shaking hands with Major General Li Deyi, a leading authority on artificial intelligence, or AI, and a key figure in the Chinese military’s effort to overtake the United States in the emerging field of advanced weapons.
The meeting between Xi and the military experts garnered little public attention.
But within US intelligence agencies closely monitoring rival China, the attention given by Xi to Li was the latest sign of the growing importance Beijing places on rapidly building autonomous weapons ‐ robotic arms capable of thinking and acting at the speed of light.
The Chinese military quest for integrating AI into its tanks, naval forces and aircraft is the part of China’s asymmetric or "assassin’s mace" warfare strategy ‐ building high-technology arms that will enable China’s weaker forces to defeat the more powerful military of the United States in any future conflict.
Two years ago Xi spoke to the Central Military Commission and called on it to move ahead with fusing advanced technologies like big data, cloud computing and AI for the Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army.
PLA Lieutenant General Liu Guozhi, the director of China’s Science and Technology Commission, has said AI is fundamentally changing how militaries wage war.
Yang Wei, the former chief designer for the Chengdu Aircraft Corp J-20 stealth fighter, said during a speech on future air combat last year that China’s next-generation fighter would utilize AI to achieve air superiority.
"China’s breakthroughs in AI can be expected to enable future unmanned combat aircraft (UCAV) that are more responsive than human-controlled aircraft, better able to counter large formations of enemy UCAVs, as well as enable new energy weapon-equipped space combat platforms that will have to prevail over US and other space combat systems," said Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert.
"China can also be expected to use AI to enable very deep sea unmanned underwater combat vehicles (UUCVs) able to contest control over the ocean floor, where China will want to defend very large sensor grids of its Underwater Great Wall."
For China’s large and varied missile arsenal, AI has a future as well. Wang Changqing, a Chinese weapons designer, said future cruise missiles "will have a very high level of AI and automation. They will allow commanders to control them in a real-time manner, or to use a fire-and-forget mode, or even to add more tasks to in-flight missiles."
China’s application of AI to its growing cyber warfare capabilities also will increase the danger posed by cyber attacks and espionage.
China plans to attack enemy perceptions, understanding and reasoning by "taking the cognitive initiative and damaging or interfering with the cognition of the enemy based on the speed and quality of the cognitive confrontation."
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