Watch a champion fighter jet AI destroy a human pilot in a flight simulator

[LDoBe]

But don’t you see? It’s the human spirit that will make us living beings never be outclassed by cold heartless machines!

/Macross and all those other mecha-to-plane transforming dealies.

[jerwin]

@LDoBe

But don’t you see? It’s the human spirit that will make us living beings never be outclassed by cold heartless machines!

Knights of the Air - The RAF | British Pathé

the meme dates to the first world war,. though.

[jerwin]

@LDoBe

It’s the human spirit that will make us living beings never be outclassed by cold heartless machines!

neon genesis evangelion in a nutshell

[Blamp]

You should check out The Terminator.

Y’all aren’t even getting into the potential of this for MIRV-ing out a swarm of autonomous gun-carrier/kamikaze child aircraft. Seems like a natural progression.

[Otherbrother]

@rocketpj

I am about 98% sure that fighter pilots are going to be an historical artifact. In fact the concept of a human operated fighter plane worth a gazillion dollars is probably already a skeumorph.

Pretty much! A quick google search says that there’s only been a single air-to-air shoot down by an American fighter plane in the last couple of decades. In 2017 an F/A-18 shot down a relatively obsolete Syrian Su-22 that was on a bombing run. (Hardly a high-g intense dogfight.) Prior to that, the last air-to-air shoot down by American planes took place in 1999.

@Stripes

the current batch of AI agents are NOT modeling reality well enough to actually win a real dog fight, for example the simulated bullets they shoot instantaneously do abstract damage to targets in the cone. In real life the bullets take time to travel, and over the distances involved that can be significant (and the damage degrades systems differently, and/or can kill the airframe much faster or slower then expected depending on exact hit location)

I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that the last several real-world air-to-air shoot downs involved missiles, not bullets, and that it’s been quite some time since bullets took down a plane in combat. (Not counting the times that planes shot themselves down with their own bullets during training exercises) Does it even make sense to train for air-to-air combat with such an obsolete weapons system?

[LDoBe]

Hey, my waifu is in there!

Also, Angels are just as human as you or me, or even Shinji. They’re not machines, just a “different type of human”.

[al_packer]

Russia and China are watching with interest–and getting the program code as soon as it is written.

[Stripes]

@Otherbrother

I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that the last several real-world air-to-air shoot downs involved missiles, not bullets, and that it’s been quite some time since bullets took down a plane in combat. (Not counting the times that planes shot themselves down with their own bullets during training exercises) Does it even make sense to train for air-to-air combat with such an obsolete weapons system?

Beats me. It could be the flight equivalent of hand to hand military combat training which I have heard described as useful when you are dumb/incompetent/unlucky enough to have lost your weapon and combat knife and not been able to secure another from a fallen comrade or enemy, and lucky enough to encounter an enemy who has likewise been dumb/incompetent/unlucky and is in the same situation.

Dogfighting however inarguably requires immense skill and seeing AIs do it so well is amazing, and instructive of what the field can do. Probably more so then letting them do missile combat simulations…

Even if arming drones with missiles and letting AI control them is likely to be more directly useful then AI dogfighting.

This is a DARPA project right? Research more then applied to an immediate goal is something they do.

[Otherbrother]

@Stripes

Beats me. It could be the flight equivalent of hand to hand military combat training which I have heard described as useful when you are dumb/incompetent/unlucky enough to have lost your weapon and combat knife and not been able to secure another from a fallen comrade or enemy, and lucky enough to encounter an enemy who has likewise been dumb/incompetent/unlucky and is in the same situation.

Now you’ve got me all worried about AI and hand-to-hand combat and/or knife fights.