Anyone read the book “Prey” by
Michael Crichton? The story describes an artificial intelligence experiment
gone awry, where the computing power of a swarm of nanobots increasing
exponentially at an accelerating rate, and pose a threat to all living things.
Sounds scary, doesn’t it?
Well, you can rest easy for now, as
the aforementioned scenario is highly implausible with existing technology
(keyword here being existing). It
does, however, have it roots with current military and aerospace technology.
In loose terms, swarm intelligence
details the process of complex, intricate behaviours that emerge from a
substantial amount of individual program sets following simple rules. To phrase
this in layman terms, imagine a colony of termites. Somehow, somewhere along
the line, the termites figured out the best approach to gathering food sources
and constructing hives. No leader gave an order to carry out any of the
aforementioned activities; it just happened.
How would this be applied to
existing military strategies? Well, imagine a group of tanks defending the
border of our country. Now, let’s take a step further, and say that all 20 of
those tanks were unmanned, and relied on swarm artificial intelligence. On
their own, the tanks can detect rapidly approaching threats and neutralize them
with extreme prejudice; but when supplied with aerial data from unmanned drones
and fed with data from geosynchronous satellites, the country’s borders would
effectively be impervious to attack, as the networked intelligence linked to
both the ground and aerial vehicles provide an unprecedented amount of data
that can be analysed and utilized by the defense forces.
Too much to digest? Well, think Terminator, where we are the humans
(well duh), and Skynet are the robots (what else would they be). We would be
curb-stomped, and slaughtered. Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud. (297 words)
Written by Thinesh and Kaza
References:
Tucker,P.(2014). Defense One. Inside the Navy's Secret Swarm Robot Experiment. [Online] 5 October 2014. Available from http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/10/inside-navys-secret-swarm-robot-experiment/95813/ [Accessed 26 September 2015]
