Real Alpha
Try Pro free

Future of Life Institute Podcast · 2 min · Sep 25, 2026

AI made human judgment the longest step in a targeting cycle

Katrina Manson · Reporter, Bloomberg

At the 18th Airborne Corps, AI took over three of six decision steps, making human judgment the slowest stage.

In this episode

Full analysis
  1. 8:42AI sharply increased the number of targets the military could strike7 min
  2. 17:43Computer vision struggled when Ukraine's battlefield changed3 min
  3. 23:30Targeting doctrine is shifting from human decisions to oversight3 min
  4. 35:53Accurately labeled data matters more than the model3 min
  5. 27:00Maven was updated 50 times during Ukraine's first months3 min
  6. 29:53AI companies lack visibility into classified military use3 min
  7. 15:45AI made human judgment the longest step in a targeting cycle2 min
Up next · Training DataGreat enterprise sellers are aggressive, high-EQ and not technicalPro pick 6:40
“And it changed so that the longest part of the cycle ended up being the human judgment, just because everything else got so much quicker.”
Katrina Mansonat 16:32 · Future of Life Institute Podcast
16:32

Takeaways

  1. The 18th Airborne Corps mapped targeting into six human-led steps.
  2. AI took over data collection, analysis and assessment.
  3. Human judgment became the cycle's longest stage and remained critical.

About this segment

At the 18th Airborne Corps, AI took over three of six decision steps, making human judgment the slowest stage. Katrina Manson says that may be a bottleneck, but it is also where the law of armed conflict is considered.

Katrina Manson

Katrina Manson is author of Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare.

Investigated the US military's AI use and chronicled the Pentagon's Project Maven program in her book.

  • GD

    Gus Docker, Host · Host, Future of Life Institute Podcast

From “Can Humans Still Control AI-Assisted Kill Chains? (with Katrina Manson)”, Sep 25, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 15:48

    So to what extent is human judgment already a bottleneck? As you mentioned, the system can present thousands of potential targets. So to what extent is the decision making of lawyers and soldiers and so on already a bottleneck here? It's a really interesting question. When I went down to the 18th Airborne Corps, they showed me their decision-making system. It consisted of six steps, each of which at the time was taken by a human. And the shortest element of time was the human decision. That was the quickest thing. But once they added AI into the system, three elements of that decision-making, those steps in that cycle, were given over to AI. This was about data collection, data analysis, assessment, those kinds of things. And it changed so that the longest part of the cycle ended up being the human judgment, just because everything else got so

  2. 16:44

    much quicker. So I think it is at the stage where the decision is taking longer than other parts of the process. If what I learned at 18th Airborne Corps is being carried through to central command, which I don't know. But yes, from a military standpoint, it might be seen as a bottleneck, but it might also be seen as the most critical part of a cycle where the law of armed conflict is considered. There's also another stage, which is battle damage assessment, which is very heavily dependent on getting data back, which the US has always struggled with. And getting those kinds of things right are very important for knowing whether you waste munitions hitting the same thing again, but also whether you're risking civilian harm. And I understand from my reporting that it has always been difficult to use computer vision to get an accurate sense of whether the

  3. 17:36

    mission has been a success, because it's just very hard for computer vision to recognize