In 2017, Elon Musk signed an open letter calling on the United Nations to ban the development of autonomous weapons.
“We do not have long to act,” the letter read. “Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close.”
In 2018, he signed a pledge by the Future of Life Institute, agreeing that “the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine” and that “we will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons.”
But the draw of big government contracts to do exactly what he opposed back then has seemingly become too lucrative to remain ethically consistent. As Bloomberg reports, SpaceX and xAI, the latter of which was recently folded into the former, are now competing in a Pentagon contest to produce voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming tech.
Inside sources told Bloomberg that the Pentagon’s contest has a $100 million prize and was launched last month. The goal is to develop a drone swarm that can respond to voice commands simultaneously.
However, considering the current state of large language models, which continue to be plagued by hallucinations, it’s no wonder experts have voiced concerns about using generative AI to command lethal drones.
While coordinated movement of drones is already well-established tech, having a whole network of drones move autonomously at once in pursuit of a target has proven extremely difficult on the battlefield, per Bloomberg‘s sources.
The effort is part of the Trump administration’s Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), and the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s arm dedicated to tapping Silicon Valley for cutting-edge tech.
The goal is to progressively develop the concept from software to real-life testing across five separate phases.
According to Bloomberg‘s sources, the drones won’t just be used for reconnaissance, implying they will also serve offensive purposes. The human-machine interaction “will directly impact the lethality and effectiveness of these systems.”
That’s a considerable departure for SpaceX, which has previously inked government contracts for access to space and military satellites, but not weapons systems.
Musk’s xAI signed a $200 million contract with the US military for the use of its Grok chatbot and has been looking to hire engineers with security clearance.
The news comes ahead of a rumored SpaceX IPO at a record-crushing valuation of $1.25 trillion. How investors will react to Musk reversing his stance on the use of autonomous weapons systems remains to be seen.
Musk claimed earlier this month that SpaceX would “form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,” following the company’s merger with xAI.
The CEO, however, made no mention of his companies’ efforts to develop drone swarms.
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