THIS SPRING, A workforce of small drones, every resembling a small, sensor-laden helicopter, scoured a lush stretch of wilderness close to Irvine, California. They spent hours circling the sky, looking for, amongst different issues, surface-to-air missile launchers lurking within the brush.
The missiles they discovered weren’t enemy ones. They had been props for early check flights of a prototype navy drone full of artificial intelligence—the newest product from Anduril, a defense-tech startup based by Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus Rift.
The brand new drone, the Ghost 4, exhibits the potential for AI in navy methods. Luckey says it’s the first era that may carry out varied reconnaissance missions, together with looking an space for enemy {hardware} or troopers, underneath the management of a single individual on the bottom. The automobile makes use of machine learning (the tactic behind most fashionable AI) to research imagery and determine targets, but it surely additionally depends on extra typical rules-based software program for important management and decisionmaking amongst swarm teammates.
