US Defense Department Lets AI Pilot Take Stick of F16 Jet Fighter for 17 Hours

For everyone freaking out about this particular AI taking over the world, this is more of a response to air defense improvements by China and Russia. At the moment, with our current jets, we cannot find and destroy air defenses without losing pilots. Typically the bottleneck to aircraft attrition is trained pilots. It takes about 4 years to train an F-16 pilot and $6 million. Nearly twice as much for stealth fighters and bombers.

With modern air defense systems like the S-400 and THAAD, AI becomes essential for penetration of airspace without taking severe casualties. Using AI for wild weasel work makes much more sense. Having a 4 ship of F-16s loaded with HARMs and decoys, 20 miles ahead of your manned F-35, is an immense improvement in pilot survivability. In addition they can provide ECM to mask stealth fighters from advanced radar. We've always had drones that can do this work, but none that could survive a BFM encounter with the most basic fighter jet.

There are already scarier AIs than the ones piloting these F-16s. AIs designed to manipulate elections and generate propaganda. AIs that automate justice and perform predictive policing. AIs that create fake images and video. AIs that keep track of your every movement and purchase. AIs tracking your call logs and common associations. This one is actually to save the lives of pilots.

Both amazing and terrifying. Might be wishful thinking that as a race we do the right thing with these technologies but here is to hoping