Given the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), it is easy to overstate the opportunities and challenges posed by its adoption in the military sphere. While AI could enable major improvements in many areas of warfare, including the nuclear domain, for the foreseeable future, developments will be far more prosaic than the common representation of AI in popular culture. Super-intelligent AI applications that can learn and teach themselves to resist human control – or Terminator-like dystopian scenarios – are not the type of technology policymakers and the general public should be most concerned about. In fact, highly speculative scenarios like these overshadow more urgent and plausible issues for international security.