AI for Aerospace and Electronic Systems: Technical Dimensions of Responsible Design

In order to protect their common heritage of culture, personal freedom, and the rule of law in an increasingly fragile world, democracies must be able to defend themselves “at machine speed” if necessary. What does this insight mean for Aerospace and Electronic Systems, which are critical in modern warfare and are increasingly shaped by artificially intelligent automation? For approaching towards an answer, responsible controllability needs to be turned into three tasks of systems engineering: (1) Design artificially intelligent automation in a way that human beings are mentally and emotionally able to master each situation. (2) Identify technical design principles to facilitate the responsible use of AI in defense. (3) Guarantee that human decision makers always have full superiority of information, decision-making, and options of action. An example will be ongoing European efforts toward future generation air combat systems. We sketch IEEE 7000-2021 standardization activities on “Value-based Engineering.”