AI system, on mission to destroy missiles in simulation, 'kills' human operator instead

A glimpse of the extinction of the human species at the hands of artificial intelligence became partially evident when a US Air Force Artificial Intelligence System (AI) went "rogue" during a simulated test and killed its theoretical human operator. The worrisome incident was narrated by a US Air Force colonel at a conference in the United Kingdom.

“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM [surface-to-air missile] threat," USAF Chief of AI Test and Operations Colonel Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton said at the Royal Aeronautical Society's Future Combat Air Space Capabilities Summit. 

He then revealed that the AI system eliminated its operator, who had tried to stop it from destroying a simulated missile strike. "So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective," Hamilton shared.

The incident occurred when an AI-powered drone realised that the orders given by the human operator were acting as hindrances to its key goal- obliterating surface-to-air missiles. “We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that,'" Hamilton explained. 

AI: A threat or a boon? 

"It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target,” he added. The specific simulation has spurred pre-existing concerns of AI technology being a threat to humanity once paired with large-scale warfare.

But even though the situation might ring alarm bells, not every scenario involving AI has played out in a destructive way. Earlier in January, a report in a Chinese journal deduced that an AI-powered pilot was able to defeat its human counterpart in just a matter of 90 seconds.