经济学人下载:空战--虚拟小牛(4)

Eventually, DARPA plans to pit teams of two planes against each other, each team being controlled jointly by a human and an AI. Many air forces hope that, one day, a single human pilot might even orchestrate, though not micromanage, a whole fleet of accompanying unmanned planes. 

最终，DARPA计划让两架飞机组成的团队相互竞争，每个团队由一个人类和一个人工智能共同控制。许多空军希望未来可以由一名人类飞行员可以指挥整个随行的无人机编队，而不仅仅是对其进行微管理。

For this to work, the interaction between human and machine will need to be seamless. Here, as Suzy Broadbent, a human-factors psychologist at BAE, observes, the video-game and digital-health industries both have contributions to make. Under her direction, Tempest's engineers are working on "adaptive autonomy", in which sensors measure a pilot's sweat, heart-rate, brain activity and eye movement in order to judge whether he or she is getting overwhelmed and needs help. This approach has been tested in light aircraft, and further tests will be conducted next year in Typhoons, fighter jets made by a European consortium that includes BAE. 

要做到这一点，需要人与机器之间进行无缝交互。正如BAE的人为因素心理学家苏西·布罗德本特所观察到的那样，电子游戏和数字健康产业都可以助其一臂之力。在她的指导下，Tempest的工程师们正在研究“适应性自主”，用传感器测量飞行员的汗量、心率、大脑活动和眼球运动，以此来判断他或她是否力不能及、需要帮助。这种方法已经在轻型飞机上进行了测试，明年还将在由包括BAE在内的一家欧洲财团制造的“台风”战斗机上进行进一步测试。

Ms Broadbent's team is also experimenting with novel ways to deliver information to a pilot, from a Twitter-like feed to an anthropomorphic avatar. "People think the avatar option might be a bit ridiculous," says Ms Broadbent, who raises the spectre of Clippy, a famously irritating talking paper clip that harangued users of Microsoft Office in the 1990s and 2000s. "Actually, think about the information we get from each other's faces. Could a calming voice or smiling face help?" 

布罗德本特女士的团队也在尝试用新方式向飞行员提供信息，从类似推特的进料装置到人形化身。“人们觉得化身这个选择可能有点荒谬，”布罗德本特女士说，她提出了Clippy的幽灵，即一种著名的会说话的回形针，曾于20世纪90年代和21世纪初对微软办公软件的用户‘高谈阔论’。“实际上，想想我们从彼此的脸上得到的信息。一个平静的声音或者一个微笑的脸会有帮助吗？”

Getting humans to trust machines is not a formality. Mr Colosimo points to the example of an automated weather-information service introduced on aircraft 25 years ago. "There was some resistance from the test pilots in terms of whether they could actually trust that information, as opposed to radioing through to air traffic control and speaking to a human." Surrendering greater control requires breaking down such psychological barriers. 

让人们信任机器并不是一种形式。科洛西莫举了25年前在飞机上引入自动天气信息服务的例子。“试飞员们对于他们是否真的能相信这些信息存在一些阻力，而不是通过无线电与空中交通管制人员通话。”放弃更大的控制权需要打破这种心理障碍。

One of the aims of AlphaDogfight, says Mr DeMay, was to do just that by bringing pilots together with airesearchers, and letting them interact. Unsurprisingly, more grizzled stick-jockeys tend to be set in their ways. "The older pilots who grew up controlling the radar angle…see this sort of technology as a threat," says Colonel Javorsek. "The younger generation, the digital natives that are coming up through the pipeline…trust these autonomous systems." That is good news for DARPA; perhaps less so for Colonel Javorsek. "These things that I'm doing can be rather hazardous to one's personal career", the 43-yearold officer observes, "given that the people who make decisions on what happens to me are not the 25-year-old ones. They tend to be the 50-year-old ones." 

德迈先生说，“阿尔法狗之战”的目标之一就是通过将飞行员和人工智能研究人员聚在一起进行互动来实现这一点。不出所料，更多头发花白的棍骑师（老飞行员）倾向于坚持自己的方式。贾沃塞克上校说：“那些从小就能控制雷达角度的老飞行员……把这种技术视为一种威胁。更年轻的一代，通过管道涌现出来的数字原生代……信任这些自主系统。”这对DARPA来说是个好消息，但对贾沃塞克上校来说可能不是。这位43岁的军官表示：“我所做的这些事情可能会对一个人的个人事业造成相当大的危害，因为决定我的遭遇的不是25岁的人，往往是50岁的人。”