Marines outwitted an AI security camera by hiding in a cardboard box and pretending to be trees
By Max Hauptman | Published Jan 24, 2023 10:16 AM
Artificial intelligence can do a lot. Given a large chunk of data, it can process information faster than your average intelligence analyst can. When it comes to certain things, though, artificial intelligence is apparently still lagging behind Marine Corps intelligence.
In Paul Scharre’s new book Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Scharre recounts the story of one AI experiment that was disrupted by a squad of Marines who innovated new ways to sneak around and avoid detection. In just a day, the Marines figured out that the best way to approach an artificial intelligence system designed to identify human beings is to, well, not look like a human.
The artificial intelligence in question was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Squad X program. The technology was designed to maximize “a squad’s situational awareness, while the autonomous systems allow squads to increase their battle space and area of influence,” according to DARPA.
