The fighter jet era has passed: Elon Musk
Elon Musk pronounced the end to the manned fighter jet era in front of a crowd of fighter pilots for the US Air Force (USAF), technology entrepreneur, at Air Force Association held at Air Warfare conference in Orlando, Florida on 28 February.
The founder of Rocket builder SpaceX and artificial intelligence company OpenAI says “The fighter jet era has passed”.
General James Michael Holmes, head of Air Combat Command says the USAF may consider replacing manned fighters with attritable unmanned air vehicles (UAV), such as the XQ-58A Valkyrie. The rapid improvements in artificial intelligence are giving USAF leaders and Musk a clear confidence that the aircraft could be used in combat operations.
Holmes says Air Combat Command is not necessarily whether it’ll be a manned fighter, but how are we going to provide the capabilities that the joint force depends on us to do?
Musk has issued numerous warnings about the dangers of artificially intelligent machines and software and also raised the specter of autonomous technologies running amok in a doomsday scenario akin the Terminator movies.
AI and the US military’s use of such emerging technologies. The Pentagon wants safeguards for AI to prevent unintended harm caused by highly autonomous aircraft or weapons and it also allows a military to prevail in an air battle by allowing unmanned fighters to obverse, target and fire a missile at an enemy faster
Musk finally says Musk. “We still want to retain the authority to damage or destroy anything that isn’t an autonomous drone – keep that authority back there with the person in the loop.”
