All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
> In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet lobbyists descend upon Washington. Skynet is reinstated, and later the US declares a new war in the middle east. The Skynet stock rallies.
Interesting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.
> The U.S. Army is seeking innovative humanoid technology solutions from eligible small and large businesses across the globe to advance toward fielded militarized humanoid capabilities through the xTechHumanoid competition
Pretty much, but it's building on top of the previous QF program [0][1] where the USAF would retrofit retired jets like the F-4 and older F-16s as drones for target training. They used to be remotely controlled but the VENOM platform is testing complete autonomy.
> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation.
How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
These are going to be experienced test pilots who are pretty good at actively managing autopilots and other automated systems. Plus they'll be backed up by telemetry to ground controllers. But ultimately the military is willing to accept some losses in order to advance key R&D programs.
So did Boeing airtoys, and NASA stuff lend to 3rd parties with no concept of a metric system.
I trust machinery designed from Forth and Lisp hackers with TONS of background on CS science and hardware (and math, up to the point on being THE people creating most "new" technology and old ones such as the Floating Point IEEE standard).
The field demo I want to see, Human in the loop to failure switch over: Simulated failure of some form, where (for safety reasons) crew triggers ejection. This defaults the system to autonomous mode and the plane performs a safe landing.
Auto GCAS (Ground Collision Avoidance System) exists (pre-AI), although it is nowhere near as sophisticated as what you described. Similar type of idea though.
If the pilot passes out during high-g maneuvers, the aircraft will pull up and bring the wings level until the pilot regains consciousness.
The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
Unless those very F-16s shred their way through the AA weapons first, that is. Or follow up once the stealthier, more survivable platforms pave the way.
Iran had a solid AA system - and the level of impunity with which US operated with over Iran should give every country that wants to rely on its AA a pause. US SEAD/DEAD capabilities are fucking scary.
Of all the things that went wrong with Iran: USAF's capability to get in, punch through AA and rain fires from the sky sure wasn't one.
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The scope of the first Iraq war was to force them out of Kuwait. That is very different then the invasion of 2003. If you just think about it this should be obvious.
Oh what a great CIA campaign that would be to give the impression that U.S. military isn’t up to par - to motivate and trick our enemies into making stupid moves while we keep our true cards hidden.
You say that, but that's literally a Russian conspiracy theory with Ukraine: The US baited Russia into thinking the US was weak because of Afghanistan, and then Russia got all ballsy and walked into Ukraine and it was a trap.
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The objectives for the two wars were incredibly different, making this an apples to oranges comparison. In the first war, the objective was to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (achieved) and then to contain the Iraqi military within Iraq (achieved). In the second war, the objectives were much broader and much harder to achieve. They achieved some objectives (toppling the existing government, defeating the existing military), and then utterly failed in nation building and got into a protracted conflict with state and non-state sponsored military groups.
Because the most powerful military in the world can only do so much when ordered to execute a crap strategy by civilian leadership. Desert Storm worked because it followed the Powell Doctrine and was bounded to ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi Freedom muddled through incoherently because the Bush and Obama administrations didn't want to understand the actual problem set they were faced with, but ultimately ended up with a reasonably stable country after way too much effort and time. Iran is what happens when you have an administration who thinks you can win a war by "just bombing things," which is ironically the stereotype most of the internet has about any kind of military action.
Bush Sr knew to keep the foreign-compromised media out of the war and so accomplished the objectives of the war swiftly. Bush Jr had to deal with the media second guessing everything.
Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.
Is that hard to believe? It's got to be one of the easiest situations for AI to win in. You probably don't even need any fancy modern AI; I would have thought MPC would do most of the job.
I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.
There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...
VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.
VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.
The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".
The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".
I'm sure there will be a next generation of jet drones that are cheaper, but the autonomy kit here is probably still cheaper than new jet drones.
I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.
"I apologize, that was indeed a wedding party, not a terrorist camp I wrongly assumed. You are totally right, wasting those 3 Hydras was unacceptable. On a brighter side, we've got 39 more to go!
Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"
Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)
I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
While they can, drones are still limited by physics.
Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.
It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.
Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.
Human control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated.
Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
The way I see it, this is the JDAM of drones. Will it perform better than purpose built aircraft? No. But the USAF has a few hundred old F-16s entering retirement that would be mothballed otherwise, and strapping some cheap sensors to them is a fast way to play around with the idea while they wait for Lockheed and Anduril to finish the good stuff.
The US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets.
Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.
The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
The F16 was the first fully fly-by-wire fighter jet. It's an ideal platform for AI experiments. Having AI "wing men" can be a great tactical advantage, and they're expendable.
With apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point.
Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have.
It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have
* AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies
* AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help
* AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
* AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget
Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
Dogfights aren't really a thing for a modern military. What the AI enables is much higher endurance than is feasible with a human in the loop. They planes can stay flying as long as they can be refueled, which is also going AI.
> Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned?
Is someone, somewhere using the wrong bathroom? Or is the wrong colored person crossing an invisible line in the desert? Those seem to be the only issues that reliably get the (American) public to the polls.
These systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them.
"This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."
The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.
"Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."
>Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies
Except this never happened, it's a piece of marketing. It never "went rogue" but followed an intentional prompt (exploit-related benchmark), with hardly surprising results as the capabilities of this model were well known.
>AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
An entirely different kind of AI, not huge generalist models. Neural networks are being experimented with in sensors and control systems since the 80s and are widely used in everything since AlexNet, not sure what's new here, especially "this month" new.
As another poster already said, building new F-16s would be a waste of resources, but using the old existing F-16s by automating them is likely to be a better use of the existing resources, instead of scraping them. This also allows to gain experience that might be useful for designing the future unmanned airframes.
Not a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.
Autonomous driving is still nowhere near 100%, so why suddenly jump to fighter jets? Is this more of Hegseth's foolhardy bluster and injected testosterone? The tech isn't ready. They should start with golf-karts, not fighter planes.
-----------
Edit: Okay gang. If aircraft are easier to fly than cars are to drive, where are all your pilot licenses? If you've faced rush hour traffic, flying a military jet should be a breeze! Please, go volunteer your neighbourhoods to be the first for AI jets to be tested over. We can put a mock enemy target in an empty lot and watch them pick it off, first try, with zero collateral damage. Easy peasy!
Fighter jets don't need 100%. In a war, we accept a much higher rate of casualties than we do in day to day driving. I would also imagine that while planes are harder for a person to pilot, they are easier for a computer. Most of what makes them hard is mechanical, not dealing with unexpected situations.
Updated to reflect modern realities:
> In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet lobbyists descend upon Washington. Skynet is reinstated, and later the US declares a new war in the middle east. The Skynet stock rallies.
About time. We are a couple of decades late to the apocalypse.
Interesting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.
This is how AI will solve the paperclip problem.
I read this in Linda Hamiltons voice
I find it quite sombre to see this comment from a peson with that handle.
Ha - this was the first thing that came to mind. I read this in Arnold's voice.
I didn't read it in Arnold's voice till I saw your comment, so thank you.
No worries, these will all be controlled by AIs sitting in orbiting data centers part of the Starlink constellation.
And in any case, no one is building humanoid robots.
https://xtech.army.mil/competition/xtechhumanoid/
> The U.S. Army is seeking innovative humanoid technology solutions from eligible small and large businesses across the globe to advance toward fielded militarized humanoid capabilities through the xTechHumanoid competition
See Robot Fighting Tournament
> no one is building humanoid robots.
https://www.agilityrobotics.com/
And Boston Dynamics. And Tesla. And Honda.
Lots of people are building humanoid robots.
ref: https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I?t=29
>Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate
Just geometric? Pfff lame. You don't go ASI with that attitude.
So, it's a drone with uncessercary baggage such life support and a pilot that can't stand the Gs well.
For some reason I am reminded of Dark Star :-)
Pretty much, but it's building on top of the previous QF program [0][1] where the USAF would retrofit retired jets like the F-4 and older F-16s as drones for target training. They used to be remotely controlled but the VENOM platform is testing complete autonomy.
[0] - https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...
[1] - https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first...
> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation.
How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
These are going to be experienced test pilots who are pretty good at actively managing autopilots and other automated systems. Plus they'll be backed up by telemetry to ground controllers. But ultimately the military is willing to accept some losses in order to advance key R&D programs.
Once the AI realizes it can do a maneuver the aircraft can survive but the "bossy meatbag" in the cockpit cannot...
This stuff actually gets tested, it's not your typical web framework junk.
So did Boeing airtoys, and NASA stuff lend to 3rd parties with no concept of a metric system.
I trust machinery designed from Forth and Lisp hackers with TONS of background on CS science and hardware (and math, up to the point on being THE people creating most "new" technology and old ones such as the Floating Point IEEE standard).
The field demo I want to see, Human in the loop to failure switch over: Simulated failure of some form, where (for safety reasons) crew triggers ejection. This defaults the system to autonomous mode and the plane performs a safe landing.
Auto GCAS (Ground Collision Avoidance System) exists (pre-AI), although it is nowhere near as sophisticated as what you described. Similar type of idea though.
If the pilot passes out during high-g maneuvers, the aircraft will pull up and bring the wings level until the pilot regains consciousness.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/autogcas.html
The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
Unless those very F-16s shred their way through the AA weapons first, that is. Or follow up once the stealthier, more survivable platforms pave the way.
Iran had a solid AA system - and the level of impunity with which US operated with over Iran should give every country that wants to rely on its AA a pause. US SEAD/DEAD capabilities are fucking scary.
Of all the things that went wrong with Iran: USAF's capability to get in, punch through AA and rain fires from the sky sure wasn't one.
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The scope of the first Iraq war was to force them out of Kuwait. That is very different then the invasion of 2003. If you just think about it this should be obvious.
Oh what a great CIA campaign that would be to give the impression that U.S. military isn’t up to par - to motivate and trick our enemies into making stupid moves while we keep our true cards hidden.
Such a crazy thought.
You say that, but that's literally a Russian conspiracy theory with Ukraine: The US baited Russia into thinking the US was weak because of Afghanistan, and then Russia got all ballsy and walked into Ukraine and it was a trap.
Decades of utter incompetence somehow ended yesterday?
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The objectives for the two wars were incredibly different, making this an apples to oranges comparison. In the first war, the objective was to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (achieved) and then to contain the Iraqi military within Iraq (achieved). In the second war, the objectives were much broader and much harder to achieve. They achieved some objectives (toppling the existing government, defeating the existing military), and then utterly failed in nation building and got into a protracted conflict with state and non-state sponsored military groups.
Because the most powerful military in the world can only do so much when ordered to execute a crap strategy by civilian leadership. Desert Storm worked because it followed the Powell Doctrine and was bounded to ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi Freedom muddled through incoherently because the Bush and Obama administrations didn't want to understand the actual problem set they were faced with, but ultimately ended up with a reasonably stable country after way too much effort and time. Iran is what happens when you have an administration who thinks you can win a war by "just bombing things," which is ironically the stereotype most of the internet has about any kind of military action.
> The article smells of AI psychosis...
China has been doing something similar since 2020 [0] and something we've experimented [1] on for decades [2][3].
They have traditionally been used as target aircraft for training, but a subset are now being used as testbeds for networked ops.
[0] - https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/10/20/c...
[1] - https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first...
[2] - https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...
[3] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QF-4E_GulfofMexico_1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...
Bush Sr knew to keep the foreign-compromised media out of the war and so accomplished the objectives of the war swiftly. Bush Jr had to deal with the media second guessing everything.
Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
> Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots.
In a dogfight?
As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
The simulator is not the aircraft.
Simulator tech has come a long way. I wouldn't say a simulator invalidates the result.
They did a small set of tests with one Pilot IIRC?
I think they did it in simulation with several.
In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.
human pilots have physiological constraints that AI doesnt.
onboard computers are not immune to G's but have a substantially higher threshold until physical mechanisms fail due to strain.
Is that hard to believe? It's got to be one of the easiest situations for AI to win in. You probably don't even need any fancy modern AI; I would have thought MPC would do most of the job.
What are you talking about, Iraq fell in a month not years.
Did it? You mean operational govt fell. The country was fought over for 10 yrs, which the U.S. then backed out.
Israel got a regime change while U.S. tax payers received the bill.
In the end, it’s still a country.
I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.
Tangent: is AI a bearable arm?
Don't tread on ... my gpu
Sounds like a very expensive drone
Yes-ish.
There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...
VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.
VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.
The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".
The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".
I'm sure there will be a next generation of jet drones that are cheaper, but the autonomy kit here is probably still cheaper than new jet drones.
I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.
They are already building them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_FQ-42_Dark_Mer...
More like it'll fly itself while the pilot engages in other tasks.
Every pound of weapons officer/navigator is a pound you can't put on target all else being equal.
"I apologize, that was indeed a wedding party, not a terrorist camp I wrongly assumed. You are totally right, wasting those 3 Hydras was unacceptable. On a brighter side, we've got 39 more to go!
Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"
* You're absolutely right. My altitude is dropping precipitously. Let me check my elevator position to see if that's causing the problem.
* Bash Check elevator position
* Thought for 8s
So like some sort of automatic pilot then?
Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)
I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
> Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)
What does this mean? I’m a pilot and none of it is making any sense.
Does the presence of humans on board limit the maneuverability of these aircraft in any way? E.g. in terms of acceleration?
Yes. Humans can survive 9g for only a few seconds, while a drone could do much sharper manouvers
While they can, drones are still limited by physics.
Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.
It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.
Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.
But they also have their limits.
Bolts and trusses (and solder joints) have tensile strength limits, but it can be higher than what humans can take.
Drones have human operators. This is a murderbot.
There are already semi-autonomous drones in Ukraine.
It’s a drone. That can kill people.
Human control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated.
Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
The way I see it, this is the JDAM of drones. Will it perform better than purpose built aircraft? No. But the USAF has a few hundred old F-16s entering retirement that would be mothballed otherwise, and strapping some cheap sensors to them is a fast way to play around with the idea while they wait for Lockheed and Anduril to finish the good stuff.
The US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets.
Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.
The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
The F16 was the first fully fly-by-wire fighter jet. It's an ideal platform for AI experiments. Having AI "wing men" can be a great tactical advantage, and they're expendable.
> when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
Yeah this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44
The "see also" section lists several competitors.
I guess if you already have a load of F-16s it might make sense, but I think that's a stretch.
I thought Captain America personally stopped this initiative
This whole AI hype is such a convenient cover for the decisions of the 0.001%
It really is. It's the perfect excuse to do what they please.
That's not precisely how I remember that quote... But it's on the Internet, so my memory must be faulty.
With apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point.
Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have.
It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies * AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help * AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America * AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget
Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
Dogfights aren't really a thing for a modern military. What the AI enables is much higher endurance than is feasible with a human in the loop. They planes can stay flying as long as they can be refueled, which is also going AI.
Are dogfights still relevant? Isn't it mostly shooting missiles outside of visual range these days?
yeah well beyond the line of sight
you're either stealth, or you're a target.
they're shooting 6+ R-37s a day in Ukraine, for example
> Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned?
Is someone, somewhere using the wrong bathroom? Or is the wrong colored person crossing an invisible line in the desert? Those seem to be the only issues that reliably get the (American) public to the polls.
These systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them.
"This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."
The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.
"Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."
Which are these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-unmanned_teaming
And everyone is developing these.
>Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies
Except this never happened, it's a piece of marketing. It never "went rogue" but followed an intentional prompt (exploit-related benchmark), with hardly surprising results as the capabilities of this model were well known.
>AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
An entirely different kind of AI, not huge generalist models. Neural networks are being experimented with in sensors and control systems since the 80s and are widely used in everything since AlexNet, not sure what's new here, especially "this month" new.
> I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time,
Unfortunately you're wrong. It's not soon. It's 6 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
based, finally we get to Macross Plus
One Sharon Apple concert before the end!
Finally. I hope they do a10!
The drones of Ace Combat 7 are coming closer to reality
does this mean we'll have preachy anti-war lectures while fighting them, too?
We can only hope -- bring back M*A*S*H!
This is a huge waste of resources. F-16s were designed for humans. You can get MUCH better results designing the airframe around the lack of one.
It's a step on from the F-16 flight simulator AI competition in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
As another poster already said, building new F-16s would be a waste of resources, but using the old existing F-16s by automating them is likely to be a better use of the existing resources, instead of scraping them. This also allows to gain experience that might be useful for designing the future unmanned airframes.
I'm waiting for a ship called Nomad to go rogue.
Hey look, the lawn darts are now AI-controlled.
What a waste of resources.
Not a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.
Autonomous driving is still nowhere near 100%, so why suddenly jump to fighter jets? Is this more of Hegseth's foolhardy bluster and injected testosterone? The tech isn't ready. They should start with golf-karts, not fighter planes.
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Edit: Okay gang. If aircraft are easier to fly than cars are to drive, where are all your pilot licenses? If you've faced rush hour traffic, flying a military jet should be a breeze! Please, go volunteer your neighbourhoods to be the first for AI jets to be tested over. We can put a mock enemy target in an empty lot and watch them pick it off, first try, with zero collateral damage. Easy peasy!
Fighter jets don't need 100%. In a war, we accept a much higher rate of casualties than we do in day to day driving. I would also imagine that while planes are harder for a person to pilot, they are easier for a computer. Most of what makes them hard is mechanical, not dealing with unexpected situations.
I reject the notion that planes are harder to automate.
There are many ways that flying is an easier solve than driving, believe it or not.
Planes might be easier, large empty space in the sky