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DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

darpa.mil

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Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#51
post #40

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…

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.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#52
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#53
post #39

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 i…

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 with…

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.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#55

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.

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.

> no one is building humanoid robots.

https://www.agilityrobotics.com/

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#56

> 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…

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.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#57

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.

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.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#58

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.

I read this in Linda Hamiltons voice

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They did a small set of tests with one Pilot IIRC?
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