Retired US Air Force Colonel Gene Lee controls the control column in a simulated air battle with AI [Courtesy of the University of Cincinnati]
Artificial intelligence has scored another overwhelming victory against humans in a simulated air combat following its landmark win in the ancient Chinese board game of Go.
Retired US Air Force Colonel Gene Lee, who had trained pilots since the 1980s, failed to record a single kill against "Alpha", a new artificial intelligence (AI) developed by the University of Cincinnati, and got shot down every single time.
"I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was," Lee said after a series of battles this week against Alpha. "It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."
The University of Cincinnati said Alpha can build anti-human strategies 250 times faster than AlphaGo, a Go-playing AI developed by Google's DeepMind, which stunned the world with a 4-1 victory over South Korean Go master Lee Sedol in a historic tournament in March.
Many unmanned aerial vehicles used for military purposes are controlled by pilots sitting in front of a control panel at an operating base. Experts say that if military planes adopt AI as their pilot, the paradigm of warfare will shift into a much deadlier and effective era.
Unlike humans that require millions of dollars and at least a few years in training to become effective pilots, AI can be infinitely copied and be linked to other AIs, sharing information on battlefield situations and reacting more decisively and fast to sudden changes.
Aju News Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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