First the robots beat us at Go, now they beat us at what humans do best: killing things. Artificial intelligence researchers at the University of Cincinnati recently pitted an AI against a human tactical expert in a combat simulation, and the AI emerged victorious.

Retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee, an Air Battle Manager with “considerable fighter aircraft expertise,” went head to head with an AI opponent called ALPHA in an air combat simulator, and from his first encounter with the AI, Lee said he knew he was in trouble.

“I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was,” Lee said. “It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.”

ALPHA takes advantage of a programming method called genetic fuzzy systems, a complicated concept that allows the AI to evaluate a wide range of data to determine the best course of action in the moment. The researchers behind the project explained in an academic paper that this system allows ALPHA to make decisions that are effective even if they are not perfect.

“For example, an air-to-air missile does not need to perfectly penetrate the cockpit and physically strike the pilot of an aircraft, and finding a course of action (CoA) that utilizes 0.05 milligrams less fuel to complete an objective is not mission critical,” the researchers said in their paper, which was published in the Journal of Defense Management. “A learning system that could guarantee obtaining these solutions would be computational [sic] intractable and would never provide an answer.”

According to the researchers, Lee failed to kill ALPHA a single time over the course of multiple simulations, and the AI managed to defeat him every single time.

“I go home feeling washed out,” Lee said at the end of the experiment. “I’m tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge.”

Image courtesy of the University of Cincinnati