About CSI

Computer Society of India (CSI) is the largest IT professional society in India established in 1965 with 72 chapters across the country and with nearly a hundred thousand members. The vision of CSI is to facilitate research, knowledge sharing and profession enrichment among IT professionals across industry segments. Various Special Interest Groups such as Information Security, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, e-Governance evangelize the use of technologies. CSI has been organizing various seminars, conferences, and technical talks periodically. IT for Defence (ITD)is one such flagship event ofthe CSI.

CSI BC and SIG for Formal Methods have been conducting ITD every other year and this is the 13th in the series.

About the Conference

CSI-BC has been pioneering to bring the various DRDO labs and the defence services together over the years by organizing the Conference on Information Technology in Defense (ITD) annually. The last one was held in December 2020 on the theme IT in Defense Manufacturing. In this edition, the theme chosen is Atmanirbhar Bharat - Artificial Intelligence, A Strategic Synergy between IT and Defense.

Globally, the Defense technology is going thru major innovations to face challenges in national security. With advent of Atmanirbhar Bharat promoted by GoI, it is imperative for every defense users and suppliers of India to revisit their offerings. Innovation, Collaboration, Partnership, Betterment of Defense performance using AI, IT, IP Protection, Methods, Standards and Rights are critical requirements to ensure meeting military goals. The program is conceived with inputs from very senior advisors from defense forces and DRDO labs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started to play an increasing role in all aspects of Information Technology (IT) and in Information Communications Technology (ICT). In defence also AI is playing increasing role in all aspects of Defence from the Development of Defence products to the operational and deployment of Defence weaponsto the strategies in the battlefield and to the maintenance and end use of the defence weapons. The defence weapons could be ofan offensive type or defensive type, they could be ground based, air based, seabased space based. They could be manned or unmanned types.

Since our last conference in 2022, use of AI has become more pervasive. There are many AI Tools in the public domain such as Chat GPT, OPEN AI and so on. Also many companies use their own proprietary AI tools. There is a need for effective, correct and reliable approaches to design, develop and qualify complex, high assurance system software with the rigid schedules and budget For all engineering Disciplines usage of formal-method-based approach has been recommended to be used in the various phases of engineering process to achieve the required levels of safety and security., AI/ML methods are getting used for such developments.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed from Learning and applying it’s learning to Predictive, Suggestive, Generative and Decision Making. With this progression, the defence systems without AI is unthinkable today. AI plays a role in data processing and analysis, cyber security, simulation and autonomous systems. The AI technology adds speed, specificity and the ability to evade defences

Now more and more projects are being outsourced to private industry. Private industry has been asked to do integration of military hardware and software and also be involved in exports. Since most of the defence equipment involves fifth generation products they have a long-life cycle. Hence, they have to be maintained for 3 to 5 decades. These cannot be maintained without the aid of AI. However Industry is not ready to use AI because AI is based on availability of large amount of data and that is the challenge. AI becomes imperative for defence items for maintenance of Aerospace Products or any 5th Generation product for long term. Private Industry has to be convinced that they will succeed with the responsibilities that Government of India has given to them only if they can use AI harnessing it successfully for 5 decades. AI is smart. But they do not have ability to Judge as humans have. Hence it may give a wrong result

There are limitations in AI such as not having Judgmental, Human, reasonableness or socially acceptableness. Hence these have to be built into it. At the supervisory level or decision level at the interaction level there should be able to bring in human judgment and reasonableness. Hence this conference plans to have speakers address the following roles in all aspects of the use of AI in defence from the requirements to its end of life in projects and also the role of Judgment, reasonableness, responsible and whether the use is Socially Acceptable AI and the solution survive for 5 decades. At the supervisory level or decision level and at the interaction level there should be able to bring allthese factors into AI. These points will be brought outin the conference.