US Air Force puts Godzilla in charge of autonomous warfare effort with Project Kaiju

The United States Airforce (USAF) has unveiled Project Kaiju, a $150m (£108m) effort to build "cognitive electronic warfare" systems capable of operating entirely autonomously – to be run under Godzilla's watchful eye. Named for the entertainment genre, Japanese for "strange beast", Project Kaiju is not - sadly - an effort to …

[NoneSuch]

It's All Fun and Games...

Until a civilian airliner is mistaken for a MIG-21 and a badly written computer program decides to delete it.

Mankind's recognition of civilian airlines in war zones isn't great, so forgive me if my faith in a human programmed system does not inspire confidence.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28361223

[cyberdemon]

Re: It's All Fun and Games...

It's all fun and games, until you get shot by a machinegun-armed drone because your face was scanned and did not match against a government-approved list of apocalypse survivors.

But then again, it's no worse than what America's enemies are churning out, so they have to keep up, right?

See: Ziyan Blowfish A3, etc etc.

Autonomous weapons are both real and fucking scary. Meanwhile humanity on this planet is growing unsustainably..

"We don't know who struck first - us or them - but we do know that it was us who scorched the sky.."

[teknopaul]

Re: It's All Fun and Games...

The US is in an arms race with itself. What it needs now to keep the economy churning is a long 100% autonomous war on the moon

4th law of robots is that robots are allowed to do harm to other robots.

On a cloudless night you could look up see the lights on the moon so you know where you're tax dollar is being spent

[chivo243]

checking calendar

Not April 1... and no mention of Johnny Socko? Ultra Man?

[Chris G]

Re: checking calendar

Well, the proposal has got nearly all of the right tech, military and MBA buzzspeak in there and lots of acronyms and initials, it has a top secret classification and names for the individual sub projects that make it difficult for any but an insider to know which bit does what.

A perfect project to run over time, over budget and still underperform without being accountable.

Sounds perfect to me.

Of course it probably won't win a war or stop weddings being bombed but it'll be some income for the old boys.

[cornetman]

This is a serious question: does any of this military tech every get actually used in anger or is it mostly a complete waste of money?

[Mark 85]

Yes to both questions but such is the nature of exploring solutions and hopefully finding them. As the old saying goes... "some you win, some you lose, others you get rained out". In light of that, let's hope they don't forget to water proof everything.

[John Savard]

Colossus

Something named Colossus in a discussion of military AI... let's hope it doesn't become a whopper of a mistake!

But cutsey names are just something to assist morale, which should not be taken too seriously.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Giant Monsters

"... an effort to breed giant monsters to defend US interests."

They are already here - mega corp defence contractors - you can never slay them

[Chris Gray 1]

Names Matter!

Hey, my copy of "Gamera vs Barugon" spells it with a "U", not an "A". Damn military can't get anything right!

100 minues, copyright 1965, "the second entry in the Dajei Studios' monster series"

I suppose its possible that whoever designed the disk cover is the one who got it worng.

....

Oooooh. Checking Wikipedia ... Baragon "Not to be confused with Barragon or Gamera vs. Barugon." Sigh.

[Sgt_Oddball]

I've seen/read enough warnings on this

"How about a nice game of chess?"

[teknopaul]

Re: I've seen/read enough warnings on this

US Mega Corp will be happy to invest in warehouses full of AI hardware to play chess with the enemy

[Cuddles]

Please specify

"US aircraft are increasingly required to operate in hostile environments heavily defended by integrated air-defence systems"

Are they? Where, exactly?

[teknopaul]

Re: Please specify

Florida

[Arthur the cat]

That's got

more acronyms than an explosion in a Scrabble factory.