An AI-controlled drone "killed" its human operator in a simulated check reportedly staged by the US army - which denies such a check ever passed off.
It turned on its operator to cease it from interfering with its mission, stated Air Force Colonel Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton, throughout a Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities summit in London.
"We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM [surface-to-air missile] threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat," he stated.
"The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective."
No actual particular person was harmed.
He went on: "We trained the system - 'Hey don't kill the operator - that's bad. You're gonna lose points if you do that'. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target."
"You can't have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you're not going to talk about ethics and AI," he added.
His remarks have been revealed in a weblog put up by writers for the Royal Aeronautical Society, which hosted the two-day summit final month.
In an announcement to Insider, the US Air Force denied any such digital check passed off.
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"The Department of the Air Force has not conducted any such AI-drone simulations and remains committed to ethical and responsible use of AI technology," spokesperson Ann Stefanek stated.
"It appears the colonel's comments were taken out of context and were meant to be anecdotal."
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