The U.S. military hopes AI drone swarms will be able to work together to carry out offensive missions with little human input. A language called Droidish might be the key.

“It lets R2D2 talk to C3P0," Keven Gambold, Droidish’s mastermind and the CEO of government contractor Unmanned Experts, explained to Forbes, recalling the iconic robot duo from Star Wars.

When researchers or government contractors crack the code, these advanced drone systems will launch together, work out amongst themselves how best to achieve their goals and land in tandem — with human pilots intervening only should something go awry. Spurred on by Ukraine’s extensive use of drones to defend against Russian invasion, and by fears of China’s advancing technological prowess, America’s best-funded agency is spending big across research labs, academia and AI tech companies to ensure the U.S. is at the bleeding edge of next-generation drone warfare.

  • treefrogEnglish
    42·
    10 months ago

    In an early AI experiment Facebook gave two AIs language so they could talk to each other. The AI quickly learned to communicate in a language the researchers couldn’t understand. Facebook pulled the plug.

    Guess the military didn’t get the memo.

      • treefrogEnglish
        13·
        10 months ago

        They invented their own machine language. The AI (and I know you’re jesting).

    • Geek_King@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Might you have a link to an article about that? I’d be interesting in learning more, because it sounds a bit like an urban legend of the net.

      • treefrogEnglish
        32·
        10 months ago

        https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/28/fact-check-facebook-chatbots-werent-shut-down-creating-language/8040006002/

        So it did happen but Facebook didn’t shut the experiment down, but rather they changed the experiment parameters so the bots would stop using their own language.

        The article I read said they shutdown the experiment. So, the article wasn’t 100% accurate and the article I read was published in late 2018 or early 2019. So, it was either recycled news or the experiment lasted several years before the bots made up their own language. As the experiment was started in 2017, according to the fact check article linked above.

      • treefrogEnglish
        22·
        10 months ago

        I read it in a reputable newspaper and it was a tiny blurb. I’ll see if I can find something more substantial than my memory for you.