Nicolas Eckhardt, 5 May 2017

The Development of Drones with Artificial Intelligence

“What I cannot create, I do not understand”—Richard Feynman.
Elon Musk, Sam Harris, Stephen Hawking and Nick Bostrom are the most brilliant people regarding the development of Artificial Intelligence. They are seriously concerned about the fast progress of development: We need to be careful with these technologies as long as we can control it

The unreal development of Drones

When we are thinking about a small device with four propellers which is making an annoying noise, controlled with a weird remote – we may think about a drone. The word “Drone” gets more and more common over the past 5 Years. “It is the most sold toy in 2016” – Jack Ma, Alibaba CEO (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31129804). But being precise, the word “Drone” means something different: A drone is a device, which takes certain actions by itself, without user interaction. But is Artificial Intelligence already used to make drones fly autonomously without the interaction of the pilot?

DJI, one of the most successful producers of consumer drones worldwide, has the technology of camera drones revolutionized. In 2016, it is possible to buy a drone, with a gimbal (autonomously working stabilizer for the Camera), a Full HD camera and an autopilot, for under 600$. We can fly more than 6 kilometers away, get a clear video, and let the drone fly back to us, without even making a single action. We can say, the development of autonomous intelligence in drones increased dramatically the last 5 years. It is no longer a privilege of the military to have autonomous flying and self-stabilizing “Air-vehicles”, “Quadcopter” or “Drones” – however we call it.

Artificial Intelligence of OpenAI

But all these functions and technology’s we already have built in a drone are just one step of the revolution. Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla and SpaceX has founded a Company called “OpenAI” which is specialized on creating a “Safe” Artificial Intelligence. The Company makes a huge progress in building self-thinking systems. They launched a programmewhich will be able to understand our world by receiving pictures of it– soon.

The Program is learning by itself and creates algorithms to read data out of given pictures. The difference between artificial thinking like Siri from apple is doing, and the artificial thinking of OpenAI, is tremendous. Siri is programmed to react to specific inputs and actions – this is not the real artificial intelligence. Neither artificial intelligence are robots, who are walking around, speaking and looking like human beings. This is more the world of Movie Creators. “This imagination is just the finger of Artificial Intelligence. We will be able to learn from our systems. There is no need, to feed programs with information’s, there is more the need to prevent systems to gain more knowledge when we don´t want it to get more intelligence – Elon Musk” (https://openai.com/research/). OpenAI is learning on its own, and can improve it skills without the interaction of anyone.

What can Drones do with Artificial Intelligence?

Emergency Drones, who are flying directly to the concerned Person who needs a medical treatment, scanning a Field for Farming to make shure to fertilize on the correct positions, or even Police Drones equipped with a Camera and pepper spray, are already in beta phases and are working perfectly. It is just a matter of time and regulations to make these existing Drones legal. But a self-learning Drone, which needs no action of a human being to start flying, scanning or fertilizing, is by far the scariest thing all entrepreneurs around the world can imagine. It would be a loss of control and security. Without going into conspiracy theories, imagine a flying object, which can fly over hours and is connected to the internet. With every second it is getting more and more intelligent. It will be able to load its batteries without a human being. For example: It can refine its software to have a more precise face detection to recognize emotions, or even develop a gravity control which makes it more difficult to bring it back down on the ground. It will be more intelligent than we are. Especially the imagination of OpenAI build in a Camera Drones can be scary. A Flying drone, with an “eye” from which it is learning from – unlimited pictures, unlimited knowledge, unlimited distance.

Artificial Intelligence - Is it the next big thing?

Artificial Intelligence: How the humanoid robot Pepper change the service industry

Nicolas Eckhardt

Download a brochure & learn more about us

Would you like to learn more about our Bachelor's and Master's programmes at home in peace? Download the CBS brochure for an in-depth look at our business study programmes.

We hope that you enjoy getting to know more about our school, study programmes and what we stand for. Follow us on Instagram & Facebook, get to know us at one of our Information Events, or Contact our student advisors to get more info.