U.S. scientists are worried that they’re falling behind in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race.

The “Autonomy” study, a highly awaited research project, projects both optimistic and pessimistic views of the future in regards to AI.

According to The Fiscal Times, autonomy, machine learning, and AI could all lead to a revolutionary change in the military, home security, supply delivery, and espionage. The more glass half-empty view, though, is that AI technology is growing at such a rapid rate that the military can’t even keep up.

The study recommends that the U.S. take action and figure out how to address the advancing AI race.

“For years, it has been clear that certain countries could, and most likely would, develop the technology and expertise to use cyber and electronic warfare against U.S. forces,” said the authors of the study. “Yet most of the U.S. effort focused on developing offensive cyber capabilities without commensurate attention to hardening U.S. systems against attacks from others. Unfortunately, in both domains, that neglect has resulted in DoD [Department of Defense] spending large sums of money today to patch systems against potential attacks.”

The DoD base budget amounts to roughly $496 billion, which is approximately 83% of the entire military spending. Yet, despite the U.S. spending hundreds of billions of dollars toward military advancements, adversaries developing AI-enabled operations still pose a serious threat to the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Product Design and Development reports that the key is to develop this AI technology faster than competitors can without rushing our own product. If these AI systems can’t be trusted, they perhaps shouldn’t be produced.

These operations must “operate reliably and within its envelope of competence, ” read the study. Letting an autonomous system hunt down and potentially destroy on its own can lead to some very obvious problems. This isn’t really something that should be rushed into implementation.