Israel Pursues AI's "Superpower" Title With Technological Advances And High Research Budget

The Israeli government wants to leverage their technological expertise to become the "superpower" of artificial intelligence (AI). (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - The Israeli government wants to leverage their technological expertise to become a "superpower" of artificial intelligence (AI). This was said by the Director-General of the country's Ministry of Defense on Monday, May 22 by predicting progress in autonomous warfare and efficient combat decisions.

According to former military general Eyal Zamir, measures to take advantage of AI's rapid evolution include the formation of a special organization for military robots in the ministry, and the highest existing budget for research and related development this year.

"There are people who see AI as the next revolution in changing the face of war on the battlefield," Zamir said at the Herzliya Conference, the annual international security forum.

He mentioned GPT (General Pre-trained Transformer) and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) as the realm of deep learning being handled by the civil AI industry which can eventually have military applications.

This potential, according to Zamir, includes "the platform's ability to attack in groups or combat systems to operate independently, data merger, and aid in quick decision making, on a larger scale than we've seen before".

The ministry declined to provide figures regarding their current AI funding.

The Israeli military has opened up some of the autonomous systems that have been implemented. In 2021, they announced that the robotic watchdog broker will assist patrols on the Gaza Strip border.

This month, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries revealed an autonomous intelligence data-gathering submarine, which, he said, had completed a "buly hours" of operations.

Eyal acknowledged Israel's achievements in cyber warfare - widely believed to be used against Iran's nuclear facilities - to "precise and timely recognition of the dimensions of defense, economy, national and international".

"Our mission is to make the State of Israel a power of artificial intelligence (AI) and to be in front of a very limited number of world powers in this club," he added.