Read on Twitter
[Thread] Here's a video showing how a new computer system currently under development for US strike drones will use facial recognition, among other AI functions, to identify targets.
2/ Militaries have long fought the perception that drones are artificially intelligent robots with advanced autonomous functions. But every time a new AI feature is added to these weapons, they get closer to being exactly that.
3/ Everything I've heard about the camera quality on these kinds of drones suggests that the resolution still isn't good enough for a human, let alone a computer, to reliably recognize faces from 25,000ft.
As the video would have it, this system appears to far exceed the performance of Project Maven, which is the DoD's flagship AI program for drone targeting analysis.
Not long ago, Maven was performing at just 50-60%. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/08/joint-ai-chief-start-with-50-solutions-get-better-asap
Not long ago, Maven was performing at just 50-60%. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/08/joint-ai-chief-start-with-50-solutions-get-better-asap
Even facial recognition at close range is not without its challenges. Stories like these raise important questions that are directly relevant to the debate on military AI.
@kashhill https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html
@kashhill https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html
5/ This is why I believe more attention should be paid to these kinds of "lethality-enabling autonomous weapons." Yes, there's a human in the loop, but that doesn't mean they don't raise some important and difficult questions. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/20/ai-autonomous-weapons-artificial-intelligence-the-killer-algorithms-nobodys-talking-about/
6/ Technologies like this targeting system are much closer in the pipeline than the "killer robots" that most people imagine when they think about AI warfare.
7/ This story from FlightGlobal has some fascinating background on the Agile Condor program. Apparently one of the main motivations for the technology is to free up limited bandwidth on the link between the drone and the pilots. https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/general-atomics-flies-mq-9-reaper-with-ai-pod-that-chooses-targets-autonomously/140039.article
