Tech & Society
Killer Robots Are Here: Are AI-Powered Weapons the Future of Warfare?
War is already bad enough. What happens when human combatants are replaced by machines?
Military
Tech & Society
Distance Killing: Israeli Agents Assasinated Iranian Scientist With AI-Sniper Rifle
A remote sniper used an automated system to take out a human target located thousands of miles away.What happened: The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad used an AI-assisted rifle in the November killing of Iran’s chief nuclear scientist,
Tech & Society
AI Engineers Weigh In on AI Ethics: Survey Shows How AI Engineers Feel About Ethical Issues
Machine learning researchers tend to trust international organizations, distrust military forces, and disagree on how much disclosure is necessary when describing new models, a new study found.
Tech & Society
Deadly Drones Act Alone: Libya's military may have used AI-powered drones in 2020.
Autonomous weapons are often viewed as an alarming potential consequence of advances in AI — but they may already have been used in combat. Libyan forces unleashed armed drones capable of choosing their own targets against a breakaway rebel faction last year.
Tech & Society
Drones For Defense: How companies like Anduril are developing military drones.
Drone startups are taking aim at military customers. As large tech companies have backed away from defense work, startups like Anduril, Shield AI, and Teal are picking up the slack. They’re developing autonomous fliers specifically for military operations.
Tech & Society
Autonomous Weapons Gain Support: A panel led by Eric Schmidt encouraged more military AI.
A panel of AI experts appointed by the U.S. government came out against a ban on autonomous weapons. A draft report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence recommends against a proposed international global prohibition of AI-enabled autonomous weapon systems.
Tech & Society
U.S. New Year’s Resolutions for AI: All the AI programs authorized in the 2021 NDAA.
U.S. lawmakers authorized a slew of national programs that promote artificial intelligence research, development, and deployment, and support efforts to make sure the results are ethical and trustworthy.
Tech & Society
Phantom Menace: Fighter pilot trains against augmented reality jet.
A fighter pilot battled a true-to-life virtual enemy in midair. In the skies over southern California, an airman pitted his dogfighting skills against an AI-controlled opponent that was projected onto his augmented-reality visor.
Tech & Society
The Geopolitics of Data: How data impacts military uses of AI
Some politicians and pundits believe that, in the AI era, the military with the most data wins. A new analysis disputes this notion. A report by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology examines the relative strengths of the Chinese and U.S. militaries in AI.
Tech & Society
AI Versus Ace: An AI fighter pilot beat a human ace in a virtual dogfight.
An autonomous fighter pilot shot down a human aerial ace in virtual combat. Built by defense contractor Heron Systems, the system also defeated automated rivals from seven other companies to win the AlphaDogfight trial.
Tech & Society
Where Are the Live Bombs?: Computer vision identifies unexploded bombs in Cambodia.
Unexploded munitions from past wars continue to kill and maim thousands of people every year. Computer vision is helping researchers figure out where these dormant weapons are likely to be.
Tech & Society
Code No Evil: Why YOLO's co-creator no longer works on computer vision.
A prominent AI researcher has turned his back on computer vision over ethical issues. The co-creator of the popular object-recognition network You Only Look Once (YOLO) said he no longer works on computer vision because the technology has “almost no upside and enormous downside risk.”