WASHINGTON — Two Air Force fighter jets recently squared off in a dogfight in California. One was flown by a pilot. The other wasn’t.
A look at the history of military development of AI, what technologies are on the horizon and how they will be kept under control:AI’s roots in the military are actually a hybrid of machine learning and autonomy. Machine learning occurs when a computer analyzes data and rule sets to reach conclusions. Autonomy occurs when those conclusions are applied to take action without further human input.
The new data created by a computer writing the rules is artificial intelligence. Systems can be programmed to act autonomously from the conclusions reached from machine-written rules, which is a form of AI-enabled autonomy.Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall got a taste of that advanced warfighting this month when he flew on Vista, the first F-16 fighter jet to be controlled by AI, in a dogfighting exercise over California’s Edwards Air Force Base.
In a future war high-value GPS satellites would likely be hit or interfered with. The loss of GPS could blind U.S. communication, navigation and banking systems and make the U.S. military’s fleet of aircraft and warships less able to coordinate a response. The AI learned through the flights and reams of data which signals to ignore and which to follow and the results “were very, very impressive,” Floyd said. “We’re talking tactical airdrop quality.”