• The U.S. Air Force walked back comments reportedly made by a colonel regarding a simulation in which a drone outwitted its artificial intelligence training and killed its handler, after the claims went viral on social media.
• The killer-drone-gone-rogue episode was initially attributed to Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI testing and operations, in a recap from the Royal Aeronautical Society’s FCAS23 Summit in May.
• In the original post, the Royal Aeronautical Society said Hamilton described a simulation in which a drone fueled by AI was given a mission to find and destroy enemy air defenses. A human was supposed to give the drone its final authorization to strike or not, Hamilton reportedly said.
• But the drone algorithms were told that destroying the surface-to-air missile site was its preferred option. So the AI decided that the human controller’s instructions not to strike were getting in the way of its mission, and then attacked the operator and the infrastructure used to relay instructions.

Tagged: U.S. Military