Every time artificial intelligence (AI) beats a human in something, the world cries “Skynet” and assumes the robot takeover is about to happen. Whereas we definitely don’t have to worry about that happening anytime soon, a new AI has wandered onto the stage and, for once, a Terminator film series-inspired machine revolution appears to be somewhat possible.

 

Writing in the Journal of Defense Management, a team of researchers describe how their AI – dubbed “ALPHA” – has recently bested its most formidable opponent, retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee, in a series of war games.

 

Specifically, this AI was designed to engage in simulated air combat against human opponents, and this particular ranking officer has considerable aerial combat experience. Impressively, or perhaps worryingly, the colonel was defeated each and every single time they ran a simulation. Not only was he unable to score a kill against the virtual, ALPHA-piloted planes, but he was shot out of the sky every single time.

 

Most significantly of all, this AI managed all this using no more processing power than the $35 Raspberry Pi, a popular off-the-shelf, basic computer. Although most advanced AIs are expected to make long-term choices using vast amounts of processing power, ALPHA uses something called “Genetic Fuzzy Tree” logic that recognizes which variables in the environment are immediately important and only acts on those. Ultimately, each incremental decision only requires a modicum of processing power.

 

This AI is ultimately designed to pilot warfare-equipped drones, also known as Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs). It looks like that program is well on its way, with Lee describing ALPHA in a statement as “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I’ve seen to date.” Although it is constantly learning from its errors, ALPHA is already so advanced that it can assess and choose from up to 250 flight actions before any human combatants have even blinked.

 

AI Repeatedly Beats Colonel In Aerial Combat Simulations | IFLScience

In the present, the scary part is the ability for a skilled hacker to take over one or all of our Drones.

 

In the near future, AI will be able to kill humans every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I think AI could cause a near extinction event in less than 24 hours.

 

Artificial Intelligence is a real threat.

Things like this leave me perpetually baffled as to why we try to develop these things. If it is smart enough to defeat some of our best there is a good chance we can develop something that is capable of overcoming any blocks we put into its own programming. Barring that as Guru said, hackers can be even worse.

 

Then again there is #3, if it has the ability to read human internet activity it would definitely turn against us in a heartbeat. See Microsoft's AI program from not too long ago that was turned into a racist in less than a few days.

Could be that future large scale wars are fought between robots/AI devices. If we have this tech then it would stand to reason that China and possibly others have now stolen it also.

 

Only way to keep from being hacked is an air gap between systems and the web...In other words computers that control the most important and sophisticated technology do not need to be connected to the Web in any way.

 

I'm sure the US has tech now to communicate between computers without using the net, which would be vital in keeping tech like this from being hacked.