US Air Force denies AI drone attacked operator in test

A US Air Force colonel "mis-spoke" erstwhile describing an experimentation successful which an AI-enabled drone opted to onslaught its relation successful bid to implicit its mission, the work has said.

Colonel Tucker Hamilton, main of AI trial and operations successful the US Air Force, was speaking astatine a league organised by the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The Air Force says nary specified experimentation took place.

In his talk, helium had described a virtual script successful which an AI-enabled drone was repeatedly stopped from completing its task of destroying Surface-to-Air Missile sites by its quality operator.

He said that successful the end, contempt having been trained not to termination the operator, the drone destroyed the connection operation truthful that the relation could nary longer pass with it.

"We've ne'er tally that experiment, nor would we request to successful bid to realise that this is simply a plausible outcome," Col Hamilton aboriginal clarified successful a connection to the Royal Aeronautical Society.

There person been a fig of warnings astir the menace to humanity posed by AI issued precocious by radical moving successful the sector, though not each experts hold however superior a hazard it is.

Speaking to the BBC earlier this week, Prof Yoshua Bengio, 1 of 3 machine scientists described arsenic the "godfathers" of AI aft winning a prestigious Turing Award for their work, said helium thought the subject should not beryllium allowed to person AI powers astatine all.

He described it arsenic "one of the worst places wherever we could enactment a super-intelligent AI".

I spent respective hours this greeting speaking to experts successful some defence and AI, each of whom were precise sceptical astir Col Hamilton's claims, which were being wide reported.

One defence adept told maine Col Hamilton's archetypal communicative seemed to beryllium missing "important context", if thing else.

There were besides suggestions connected societal media that had specified an experimentation taken place, it was much apt to person been a pre-planned script alternatively than the AI-enabled drone being powered by instrumentality learning during the task - which fundamentally means it would not person been choosing its ain outcomes arsenic it went along, based connected what had happened previously.

Steve Wright, prof of aerospace engineering astatine the University of the West of England, and an adept successful unmanned aerial vehicles, told maine jokingly that helium had "always been a instrumentality of the Terminator films" erstwhile I asked him for his thoughts astir the story.

"In craft power computers determination are 2 things to interest about: 'do the close thing' and 'don't bash the incorrect thing', truthful this is simply a classical illustration of the second," helium said.

"In world we code this by ever including a 2nd machine that has been programmed utilizing old-style techniques, and this tin propulsion the plug arsenic soon arsenic the archetypal 1 does thing strange."