AI just won a series of simulated dogfights against a human F-16 pilot. What does that mean?

Aug. 24, 2020
On the face of it, man lost badly to machine, writes Eric Tegler for Forbes.

NAS PATUXENT RIVER, Md., - DARPA’s AlphaDogfight simulation just wrapped up. On the face of it, man lost badly to machine. In fact, the human F-16 pilot, call sign “Banger,” lost all five simulated dogfights to Heron Systems’ artificial intelligence agent, writes Eric Tegler for ForbesContinue reading original article.

The Intelligent Aerospace take:

August 24, 2020 -Heron Systems is a small business - in fact, the California, Maryland-based company has fewer than 30 employees pictured in its holiday party photo taken in 2019. Heron battled past some heavy hitters to earn the right to take on the human F-16 pilot, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Georgia Teach Research Institute.

U.S. Air Force Colonel Dan "Animal" Javorsek, head of the ACE program, said "The more that we can enable our unmanned systems to behave, look and act like intelligent, creative entities, the more that causes problems for our adversaries."

The pilot, call sign "Banger," said, "Some of the rules and constraints that we normally apply to our human training environment weren’t there. So you saw the AI maneuvering to a position of advantage where it was able to use its more refined aiming technique with perfect information... Outside of that, it was very similar to what we see in our ordinary training in [simulators]."

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