Killer robot swarms, an update

of a previously written article

“The Rise of Killer Robot Swarms: A Look at the Latest Advancements in Autonomous Technology”

The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

so you think Killer Robot are scary? Try a whole swarm of them.

It’s no secret that militaries around the world are competing to create the smartest weapons.

But AI in warfare doesn’t necessarily mean a powerful brain – it can also be a blizzard of dumb little vehicles overpowering an enemy. Wladimir Putin, in a speech predicted about the AI war a few years ago that “if one party’s drones are destroyed by another’s drones, they will have no choice but to surrender”.

So where is the Pentagon in? Developing an effective drone swarm — a group of autonomous drones that can communicate to achieve an objective — is “undoubtedly a priority” for the US military, according to Elke Schwarz, author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologiessaid Digital Future Daily.

The Pentagon doesn’t openly discuss many of its most advanced technologies, but it did last year invited to submit proposals from the defense industry for a new program called AMASS for Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms. The Goal: Develop the ability to deploy thousands of autonomous land, sea, and air drones to overwhelm and dominate an enemy’s area defenses recently updated documents.

Where they would send such a swarm — officials haven’t given names, though Observers who read between the lines think they could imagine using them in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. (A Pentagon spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

“I’m not surprised DARPA and DoD are working on this, considering they’re in a tech race with China, which has also had its own crushing successes to date,” Samuel Bendett of the Center for a New American Security told Digital Future Daily. Last week, Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute also urged the United States to do the same Challenge China with drone swarms.

The AMASS program isn’t the first time the Strategic Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — better known as DARPA — has been exploring the use of autonomous drone swarms to gain the upper hand. six years ago started the department a separate OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics Program (OFFSET) program aimed at perfecting the use of swarms in support of the Army’s ground forces.

Last year, six months after the Pentagon performed its final OFFSET testa senior DARPA official FedScoop said it might be possible that the US military could launch swarms of up to 1,000 drones within the next five years.

So far, the number of military drone swarms actually deployed is one: in 2021 Israel sent a fully autonomous swarm of small drones to work with other missiles and weapons to locate, identify and attack Hamas militants.

Israel’s crush is “just the beginning,” said Zak Kallenborn, George Mason’s political scientist wrote in DefenseOne. While AI was employed, the drones weren’t as sophisticated as future swarms could be, he wrote, as they coordinated with mortars and ground-launched missiles to hit targets miles away. Going forward, “swarms won’t be that easy.”

So what about the drone swarm ethics? And limits? Drone swarms in the wrong hands have potential Experts warn of being weapons of mass destruction for two reasons: their potential to harm many people at once, and a lack of controls to ensure they do not harm civilians. Because swarms communicate with each other, as opposed to a group of drones acting independently, the risk of catastrophe if something goes wrong is much higher.

The Ministry of Defense has set up some guard rails. The Department updated its autonomous weapons policy stick to it Ethical principles of AI, which outline the design, development, deployment, and use of AI. In the case of drone swarms, the directive would ensure that the technology must be absolutely foolproof – with no risk of fatal miscalculations or unforeseen actions – before being deployed.

But nations without such safeguards could do irreparable damage. Drones can be cheap and easy to build. Networks can be created by unethical programmers. In short, a drone swarm is a pretty scary technology, accessible to many countries – or even insurgent groups.

“They could be used for both large-scale surveillance and large-scale indiscriminate attacks,” Michel said.

And for malicious actors like terrorist groups and those without AI laws, “the fact that swarms are terrifying and unpredictable and random,” he said, “would actually be a major selling point.”

Google was great at search algorithms from the start — but it took a while for search to be profitable. The companys side rank Algorithm blew up existing web search techniques no more water in the early days of the web and quickly found one loyal followingbut the company’s supporters could only breathe a sigh of relief after the founders started selling keyword advertising at 5 cents per click in 2002. (The pay-per-click money-making idea was actually created by one of the pioneers Bill Gross’ Idealab stocks, called Goto.com.).

Of course, Google isn’t the only search engine in town. It’s still dominant, but Microsoft’s Bing was crawl up slowly in market share. Now the two companies are openly fighting for search supremacy with generative AI.

Today Microsoft unveiled AI-powered updates to its search engine and browser Press appointment todayand is said to be planning further Let people “switch”. between a traditional search results page and a chat service powered by ChatGPT. Hot on its heels, Google will unveil its conversational AI called Bard. Based on information provided by CEO Sundar Pichai blog post yesterdayBard appears to be integrated directly into Google’s search results page.

The difference in how AI answers are presented to the user—a toggle page for Microsoft, an integrated page for Google—will likely to affect how every business thinks about revenue from search-based advertising. As tech writer Alex Kantrowitz noted, it is not obvious how to integrate ads in conversational responses. The race for the lion’s share of the global search market may not just be about who can figure out generative AI first, but who will be able to finally make money the data And power hungry Beast, this is the next generation of web search. —Mohar Chatterjee

Tim Wu | AP Photo/Mike Groll

Tim Wu, the influential antitrust thinker and policymaker, evaluated some of the Biden administration’s biggest strategic bets on industrial technology policy while speaking at a conference hosted by the University of Colorado, Boulder yesterday.

His criteria? Whether federal subsidies have been used to create a profitable ecosystem around foundational technologies, rather than Washington just picking and supporting one-time winners.

Woo who ceded from his two-year stint as adviser to President Joe Biden on technology and competition policy last month, was enthusiastic about the $65 billion dedicated to him broadband infrastructure Programs disappointed by the airline industry Pandemic rescue packagesand somewhere in between on the CHIPS law.

However, it should be noted that it is difficult to know for sure which enabling technologies will play a part – the Clinton-era push to support supercomputers hasn’t aged too well — Wu believed that the Biden administration’s broadband investments were the right idea in principle: an industrial policy that did not create “a kind of private empire” but invested in “public resources that all companies can draw on that receive contributions from the relate to outer space”. like we did with the internet,” he said. – Mohar Chatterjee

Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ([email protected]); Derek Robertson ([email protected]); Mohar Chatterjee ([email protected]); Steve Heuser ([email protected]); And Benton Ives ([email protected]). Follow us @DigitalFuture on twitter.