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An unbridgeable divide between Silicon Valley and DoD does not appear to exist

• Respondents from Silicon Valley technology firms and alumni of universities with top-ranking computer science departments are comfortable with a variety of military applications for AI.

There is a meaningful difference in the comfort level for AI applications that involve the use of lethal force

• About one-third of respondents from the three surveyed Silicon Valley technology corporations were uncomfortable with lethal use cases for AI.

Tech workers have low levels of trust in leaders—even their own

• Software engineers and other technology workers have low levels of trust in individuals who hold leadership positions.
• Technology workers trust CEOs of technology companies almost as little as they trust elected officials or the heads of federal agencies.

Tech workers are most concerned about cyber threats to the United States

• More than 75 percent of respondents from all three populations also regarded China and Russia as serious threats to the United States.

Tech workers support the use of military force to defend against foreign aggression

• Survey respondents strongly supported using military force to defend the United States and its NATO allies from foreign aggression, with nearly 90 percent of participants finding the use of military force to be justified under these circumstances.

Silicon Valley tech workers have little personal connection to the military

• Less than 2 percent of Silicon Valley respondents had served in the U.S. armed forces.
• Almost 20 percent of software engineers working at defense contractors had previously served in the U.S. military.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is anticipated to be a key capability for enabling the U.S. military to maintain its military dominance. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)'s engagement with leading high-tech private sector corporations, for which the military is a relatively small percentage of their customer base, provides a valuable conduit to cutting-edge AI-enabled capabilities and access to leading AI software developers and engineers. To assess the views of software engineers and other technical staff in the private sector about potential DoD applications of AI, a research team conducted a survey that presented a variety of scenarios describing how the U.S. military might employ AI and asked respondents to describe their comfort level with using AI in these ways. The scenarios varied several factors, including the degree of distance from the battlefield, the destructiveness of the action, and the degree of human oversight over the AI algorithm. The results from this survey found that most of the U.S. AI experts do not oppose the basic mission of DoD or the use of AI for many military applications.

• Chapter One

  Background

• Chapter Two

  Survey Design and Survey Populations

• Chapter Three

  Survey Execution

• Chapter Four

  Survey Results and Analysis

• Chapter Five

  Key Findings and Conclusions

• Chapter Six

  Future Opportunities and Areas for Further Investigation

• Appendix A

  Survey Methodology

• Appendix B

  Survey Instrument

• Appendix C

  Aggregate Survey Results