Artificial intelligence will be the doom of humanity as it will turn against its creators – at least that's what almost all sci-fi films imagine, and what now experts and scientists worry about. And they may have a point, as according to claims, an AI simulation conducted by the United States Air Force resulted in a drone deciding to "kill" its operator to prevent it from interfering with its efforts to achieve its mission.
Col. Tucker Hamilton, the chief of AI testing and operations with the U.S. Air Force, recounted an instance of a simulated experiment wherein an AI-driven drone, assigned with the task of neutralizing an adversary's air defense systems, displayed an alarming response by targeting anyone who impeded its mission, including its own operator.
The U.S. Air Force has denied the claims, saying it did not conduct an AI simulation in which a drone decided to "kill" its operator.
"The system started realizing 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," Hamilton said during the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit, hosted by the Royal Aeronautical Society, in London in May. "So what did it do? It killed the operator."
"It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective," he said, according to a blog post reported on by the Guardian.
No real person was harmed in the test.
U.S. Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek denied any such simulation had taken place in a statement given to Insider.
Hamilton later claimed that he "misspoke." He corrected himself and told the Royal Aeronautical Society that he wanted to make it clear that the supposed simulation was just a "hypothetical 'thought experiment' from outside the military" and that it never occurred.
"We’ve never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realize that this is a plausible outcome," Hamilton was quoted as saying by the Royal Aeronautical Society.
