In September, it was revealed that the US air force (USAF) had awarded a contract to a US weapons company to develop an artificial intelligence and machine-learning surveillance system for a killer drone.
The Agile Condor system is supposed to independently (‘autonomously’) identify pre-defined targets of interest and then send information back to a human decision-maker before any action is taken.
Peter Burt of Drone Wars UK says the intended change to the Reaper killer drone represents ‘a significant step towards the development of an autonomous weapon system’ which will make life-and-death decisions by itself.
www.dronewars.net
Topics: Drones & autonomous weapons