Artificial intelligence seems to have succeeded everywhere: it has already beaten the world champion in the game of go, beaten a human in poker, mastered many computer games and learned to diagnose better than doctors.
At the moment, however, there is no artificial intelligence program that can compare, for example, with a military pilot in real air combat. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has decided to fill this gap.
As experts note, the desire to develop military science in this direction is not at all connected with the desire to improve the technique of air battles, the need for which in the future will probably disappear. We are also not talking about the development of a cybernetic air ace.
Instead, it is much more useful to create a reliable "follower partner" who could cover the pilot's back while he is concentrating on the most important stages of the combat mission.
To bring these visions to life, DARPA created the Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, the evolution of air combat. Its goal is to increase the confidence of the military in automated combat technologies. The developers want to demonstrate air combat in which artificial intelligence will participate on a par (or almost equal) with humans.
True, it will take time for artificial intelligence to learn to help the pilot. After all, the car will actually have to undergo training according to the training program for military pilots.
So, novice aces must first master the basic skills: takeoff, navigation and landing. Only after that they learn to perform aerobatics, in which the skills of a military pilot are honed.
Likewise, artificial intelligence will first need to "prove" that it can handle the simplest aircraft controls. (It is planned that the training and operations of the artificial intelligence will be overseen by experienced military instructors.)
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The creators of ACE believe that it is necessary to gradually move away from expensive and time-consuming human-controlled systems and introduce more self-controlled analogs. The reasons are clear: they are less expensive to develop and easy to modernize, replace and adapt depending on the existing needs.
According to the program manager, the new DARPA project will attract the best developers of artificial intelligence algorithms. It is they who will create the fundamental elements on which the program for the introduction of artificial intelligence in the US Air Force will be built and developed.
We add that the ACE project will be presented on May 17, 2019 at the Conference Center of the Office of Advanced Research Projects of the US Department of Defense.