AI Literacy for Defence Industry - Zygmunt Szpak

The discussion about AI regulation and law has been hampered by a lack of understanding about what AI actually is and what it can do. To date, there is no agreed definition of what constitutes AI; not any likely international consensus, with many states and NGOs adopting their own definitions.  This problem is then compounded when it comes to defining (and confining) what constitutes lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).

In this episode Dr Lauren Sanders interviews Dr Zygmunt Szpak, a computer scientist and executive director of Insight Via Artificial Intelligence (IVAI), to discuss some of these difficult questions. 

IVAI does research, development and deployment of AI, and also educates Defence industry on what AI is and how it can be used. The company is a member of the Defence AI Research Network and is currently working on Science, Technology and Research (STaR) Shots, which are challenging, inspirational and aspirational S&T missions that will align strategic research to force structure priorities.

Prior to co-founding IVAI, Zygmunt spent over a decade working as a Senior Research Associate at the University of Adelaide, in the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies which then became the Australian Institute for Machine Learning. Zygmunt remains an adjunct senior lecturer at the Institute. 

Additional Resources 

• The Prediction Machines website
• The European Commission's report, Shaping Europe's digital future, which includes 'A Definition of Artificial Intelligence: main capabilities and scientific disciplines' 
• The movie, 'Hidden Figures' 
• The  'AI and Deep Learning' collection, created by the Two Minute Papers Youtube Channel.