Air Force cadet builds military AI application using only chatbot prompts

A U.S. Air Force cadet with no prior coding experience built a functional military application by relying entirely on generative AI chatbots to write and refine code, according to MIT News. Cadet Joshua Lynch used a process called "vibe-coding", prompting Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini through their web interfaces, to create an application for his tactical team with capabilities including AI-assisted target recognition, modular intelligence and surveillance, autonomous striking, and battlefield communication management. The project was part of the Department of the Air Force-MIT AI Accelerator's Phantom Program at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Lynch's mentor, Laura Niss of the Embedded and AI Systems Group, monitored his experience to understand how nontechnical military personnel could use AI to bypass traditional software development constraints. The final application was produced using Google AI Studio App.