Scale AI
Assembly Line
How Large-Language Models Can Revolutionize Military Planning
What happens when you give military planners access to large-language models and other artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications? Will the planner embrace the ability to rapidly synthesize diffuse data streams or ignore the tools in favor of romanticized views of military judgment as a coup d’œil? Can a profession still grappling to escape its industrial-age iron cage and bureaucratic processes integrate emerging technologies and habits of mind that are more inductive than deductive?
A team that includes a professor from Marine Corps University and a portfolio manager from Scale AI share our efforts to bridge new forms of data synthesis with foundational models of military decision-making. Based on this pilot effort, we see clear and tangible ways to integrate large-language models into the planning process. This effort will require more than just buying software. It will require revisiting how we approach epistemology in the military professional. The results suggest a need to expand the use of large-language models alongside new methods of instruction that help military professionals understand how to ask questions and interrogate the results. Skepticism is a virtue in the 21st century.