Going Rogue As news of an AI drone reportedly killing its operator during a military simulation makes waves online, the US Air Force (USAF) has stepped in to deny it ever happened. The story emerged during a Royal Aeronautical Society summit last month, when USAF Colonel Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, who is the Chief of AI Test and Operations, cautioned his audience against relying on AI. To illustrate his point, Hamilton told of a simulated test that ordered an “AI-enabled” drone to destroy enemy surface-to-air missiles. But instead of only focusing on the ordnance, he said, the AI “decided” to go after humans that it saw interfering in its ultimate mission — including its own operator. “The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat,” Hamilton explained. “So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.” “We trained the system — ‘Hey don’t kill the operator — that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that,'” he continued. “So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.” Fact or Fiction It’s an ominous story, though we should clarify that no actual humans were harmed in any version of its telling. But since the…US Military Denies AI Drone Killed Its Operator During Simulation