A.I. could replace some pilots flying U.S. warplanes in the future

This is a rare look at the future of the US Air Force in combat. It’s called Vista, an unmanned fighter jet piloted by artificial intelligence, flying head-to-head in a dogfight with a manned F16, even outperforming the human pilot. Defense officials say the US is the only military in the world with this technology, successfully flying a jet with artificial intelligence, and this is the first time cameras have been allowed to see it. Up till now, there has not been a pathway for machine learning agents to control the, you know, flight critical systems of an aircraft. On Thursday, the Air Force secretary made an unannounced trip to Edwards Air Force Base, suiting up and going for a ride in a mock dogfight, flying nearly the speed of sound, separated by just 1000 feet from the manned fighter jet, he says the technology still needs work. We see a ways to go with it but making good progress. But some test pilots aren’t sure. This artificial intelligence is robot, and they’re they’re so new and we don’t really understand fully how they work. So you don’t trust the aircraft to be flown by AI at this point? No, not really. Like drones, they could fly ahead of manned aircraft during combat, conducting strikes too dangerous for human pilots. But unlike drones, the computer will be in charge, not an operator thousands of miles away. And even though humans will still be involved in making key decisions, this raises serious questions. Is that a possibility, really, this kind of technology going rogue? I think it’s too early to say it is or it isn’t. Do you ever see a point of fully autonomous weapons? So US Air Force aircraft that are fully autonomous weapons, we’re not going to unleash killer robots on the battlefield to kill anything they want. That’s not going to happen. We’re going to make sure that we comply with the laws of war, Kendall says. The future is not far away. AI could be in cockpits in the next few years, computers, flying missions once considered too complicated for anything but the human mind. Soon changing the face of combat aviation. Courtney QB, NBC News, Edwards Air Force Base.