RE: Autonomous DARPA Black Hawk A.I. War Machines Set to Take to the Skies

An interesting development. But I don't know if I should be pleased that it might help reduce casualties in a war, or deeply concerned about where this is going. I see it as inevitable that they'll arm this kind of autonomous aircraft, ostensibly for self defence (e.g. if it's carrying out resupply in an active combat zone)but it's only a short step to using it offensively. That creates all kinds of ethical issues around whether a remote machine can pass accurate information back to a human operator, and how long before the machine itself makes the decision ?

But what is far more worrying is what it is intended for. Sure, it can make logistics cheaper and less personnel intensive. But the reality is that against a peer opponent, this kind of machine is likely to be highly vulnerable to hacking (probably using back doors inserted by agents long before any war kicks off), as well as being expected to operate in a highly chaotic kinetic environment, so not really that useful.

Where it is far more useful is in civil unrest situations where there is a risk that personnel might not be seen as "reliable", refusing to carry out unethical orders or even deserting with their equipment. I have seen no data on how many pilots in the Syrian Civil War "accidentally" dropped munitions on open areas when ordered to bomb civilian targets. In that kind of situation, the AI is less vulnerable to hacking, and using AI driven autonomous aircraft to deliver airstrikes on civilian populations seems to be far closer to what this is really intended for.