In an experiment this past year, a self-driving aircraft competed against a human pilot. AI is taking over as a pilot in the United States Air Force. An AI-controlled jet defeated a human pilot in an in-air battle test last year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced in an update on Thursday.
In December 2022, DARPA started experimenting with using artificial intelligence applications as part of the Air Combat Evolution (ACE) project. Its goal was to create an AI system that could operate a fighter plane on its while following Air Force safety regulations.
DARPA tested its efforts by integrating the AI system into its revolutionary X-62A aircraft, following the practice of dogfight simulations with the AI pilot. It made it possible to launch the AI-controlled aircraft at California’s Edwards Air Force Base, which claims to have conducted its inaugural victorious dogfight trial over human pilots in September of 2023.
Although the X-62A’s human pilots could turn off the artificial intelligence system, DARPA claims that the pilots never had to utilize the safety switch. Both aircraft displayed “high-aspect nose-to-nose confrontations” and flew as near as two thousand feet at a distance of 1,200 miles per hour when the X-62A faced off against an F-16 piloted entirely by a human pilot. But DARPA does not disclose which aircraft succeeded in the duel.
Bill Gray, the head of the experimental pilot of the Air Force’s Test Pilot School, stated that dogfighting was the issue that needed to be resolved to start experimenting with independent artificially intelligent machines in the air. All the lessons we are learning apply to any task you could assign to an automated system.
The agency has carried out 21 test flights and plans to carry out more until 2024. The military’s potential employment of AI systems has raised worries due to its rapid developments. The Pentagon is interested in developing artificially intelligent military systems and improving its drone business, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal from last year.
