Russia's Kalashnikov Plans 'Self Learning' Artificial Intelligence-based Weapons

Russia’s Kalashnikov arms manufacturer is planning to build military defense systems with artificial intelligence that implies weapons’ self-learning, Industrial Director of the Rostec Conventional Armament, Ammunition and Special Chemistry Cluster Sergei Abramov said Wednesday.

The need, prospects and expediency of creating and adapting artificial intelligence systems for military use do not evoke any doubts and all the leading countries are taking efforts for introducing artificial intelligence into existing and future weapons, he was quoted as saying by TASS at the conference tiled: "Digital Industry of Industrial Russia 2018."

"The developers of military hardware consider this task largely as an engineering effort: to create the corresponding software and hardware meeting the Defense Ministry’s requirements. In this regard, we should note the expertise accumulated by the Kalashnikov Group that has achieved certain successes in this sphere," Abramov said, without specifying the weapon systems.

While a large number of weapons are in service today (for example, short-range air defense and anti-ballistic missile defense systems) operating in the automated mode from detecting to destroying targets, "these systems can hardly be called artificial intelligence because they are not self-learning systems: they strictly follow algorithms embedded by developers," the Rostec official added.