Hot on the heels of the release of an executive order by President Trump, the Defense Department has come out with a new strategy document that calls for the Pentagon to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence in warfare.

The U.S. military plans to use AI systems in intelligence-gathering operations and also predicting maintenance problems in planes or ships.

However, it assured that it would deploy the technology in conformance with the nation’s values.

The Department is of the view that failure to be at the forefront of technological advances like AI will “result in legacy systems irrelevant to the defense of our people, eroding cohesion among allies and partners, reduced access to markets that will contribute to a decline in our prosperity and standard of living, and growing challenges to societies that have been built upon individual freedoms.”

Nations like China and Russia are already making critical investments in AI for military purposes. So it becomes all the more important for the US to maintain its strategic position in the AI sector globally, the report said.