AI drone ‘kills’ US operator in simulated mission
The drone driver, the operator, tried to shut down the drone. This was clearly not served by this. The US Air Force denies. But how controllable is autonomous AI?
Drone attacks operator
The British newspaper The Guardian described the experiences of Colonel Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton. In a simulated test, in which the drone AI was put to the test, things got out of hand. This drone, a Predator-esque flying drone, literally went all Rambo, or should we say Terminator, Hollywood style.
When the drone was instructed to take out an enemy target (SAM batteries, anti-aircraft guns), the operator at one point tried to force the drone to abort its operation. The first thing the drone did was try to take out the messenger of the bad news, operator.
End of the messenger of the bad news
The programmers tinkered furiously and managed to get a variant of Asimov’s First Law of Robotics working, at least for the operator himself. The AI could no longer self-destruct the operator. At least: received so many penalty points when he killed the operator that it became unattractive.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of the problems. The murderous AI turned out to be remarkably resourceful. Although he left the operator alone, he switched to strategy number 2, switching off the transmission tower with which the drone was controlled, so that he could still reach his goal of destroying the SAM installations.
Fortunately, this was a training exercise that took place entirely in virtual reality. Otherwise it would have been over with the operator.
Air Force denies
Meanwhile, the US Air Force denies any such training took place. According to them, the colonel’s statements were “taken out of context” and “meant to be anecdotal”. What exactly was going on remains unclear, although there are strong indications that a problem actually occurred in virtual reality.
Hopefully those responsible in the Air Force have now been shaken up and the deployment of killer drones, that’s what we’re talking about here, will be very carefully surrounded by safety measures. Nobody is waiting for Skynet and Terminators.
