Israel promotes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military. By 2028, about half of Israel’s defense engineers are expected to focus on AI, Eli Birenbaum, chief of the army’s operational data and applications unit, told Reuters. According to him, “many hundreds” of employees are currently working on AI projects, accounting for one-fifth of military engineers.
Within five years, the number will run into the thousands. The transformation began in 2016 when Birenbaum led the first military machine learning platform designed to detect hacker attacks.
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The colonel has the support of the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has increased the defense budget and pledged to make Israel a leading nation in AI. The problem, however, is finding the staff to do it. Training a data scientist means telling an 18-year-old, “This is your future. You have to choose a bachelor’s and a master’s degree and then do six years of military service,” said Birenbaum at his base near Tel Aviv.
During military service – two years for women, 32 months for men – the corresponding experts earn $ 335 (311.19 euros) per month. In the first few years of their later service, the salary rises to about $2,300. In comparable civilian jobs, it would be $8,400.
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“It’s no secret that I can’t compete with Google or Facebook salaries,” said Birenbaum. What he can offer is meaningful work. “We don’t just fix a button in a program. We solve problems at the nation-state level. It is not about finding a needle in a single haystack, but in eight, 80, 8000 stacked haystacks.”
For the next outbreak of violence in the Middle East conflict, Birenbaum wants an AI to collect data to predict Palestinian rocket salvos. “I want to get to where I can best use information to provide opportunities for our troops on the ground.” However, AI targeting doesn’t mean destroying automated targets, he said. “There will always be a human involved for the foreseeable future.”
Source: Krone
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