TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FOR MINDS AND WILLS"Intelligence" and "autonomy" are omnipresent phenomena in the biosphere. Before any scientific reflection or technical realization, all living creatures fuse sensory perceptions with information they have learned themselves and received from other creatures. This gives them a model of their environment, the basis to act appropriately for reaching their goals and avoiding harm. In the technosphere, artificial intelligence (AI) and information fusion (IF) combined with comprehensive automation provide technical tools that enhance the perceptive mind and active will of persons who alone are capable to perceive consciously and to act responsibly. We, thus, deliberately leave the term "AI" imprecisely defined here. For us, it comprises not only machine or deep learning, e.g., but a whole world of algorithms, including approaches to Bayesian learning.As illustrated in Figure 1, algorithms, realized by the craft and art of programming and enabled by qualitatively and quantitatively appropriate testing and training data, drive a data processing cycle that starts from elementary real-time sensor signals and observer reports collected from multiple and heterogeneous sources. IF combines these streams of mass data with context knowledge and provides pieces of mission-relevant information at several levels that are integrated into comprehensive and near real-time situational awareness pictures. On their basis, decision makers become aware of the current situation and decide to act according to the ends of their mission in a challenging environment. Algorithms transform their acts of will into partially or fully automated command sequences for controlling networking platforms, sensors, and effectors. Among the AI algorithms are neural networks and machine learning. The "world of algorithms," however, comprises much more than this particular type of information processing schemes. Thus, algorithms, based on applied mathematics and running on powerful computing devices (for a German perspective on quantum computing, see [1]), are the scientific core for designing cognitive and volitive tools that assist intelligent minds and autonomous wills in the "world of human beings." The concepts of mind and will and, therefore, of consciousness and responsibility bring natural beings into view that are "somebody" and not "something," i.e., persons, and open up ethical dimensions.The USAF General John E. Hyten (b. 1959), Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has characterized this situation by rephrasing a passage from John F. Kennedy's (1917Kennedy's ( -1963 famous Moon Speech."We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For [artificial intelligence], like nuclear science and technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, [. . .] whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war."[2], [3] ...
