00:00This was a fascinating read. It's a kind of new domain for SpaceX XAI. It's a contest. What do we
00:06need to know here?
00:08This is really the frontier of the future of war. This is everything that folks like StopKiller Robots and others
00:15have been warning about.
00:16This is the Pentagon trying to experiment with completely new tech that has so far been failing. It's experimental.
00:24And this is a moment really where the AI companies are coming to the fore quite unexpectedly.
00:28Elon Musk is the very same person who said that he would have nothing to do with new tools for
00:33killing back in 2015 when he signed on to an open letter from AI researchers and roboticists saying we do
00:42not want autonomous weapons.
00:44And now this is the Pentagon trying to create autonomous weapons. These are weapons that can select and engage targets
00:50of their own accord.
00:51The contest is not explicitly saying they will be doing that, but they are saying that drones will be moving
00:57around and taking commands from voice and turning those into digital instructions.
01:03I don't know that the prize money is necessarily the main headline for SpaceX, right?
01:09What you do really well in your reporting is explain where the technology is at and where various institutions want
01:16it to get to.
01:17So we have drones, but it's this swarming idea in the, I guess, defense use case. What needs to be
01:24cracked?
01:25I think there are four stages. First is, as you say, there are drones. Everyone's become familiar with drones because
01:30of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
01:32And Elon Musk himself said in 2024 that if there is a major power war, it's going to be a
01:38drone war.
01:39So everyone is very focused on what that might look like in the case of a U.S.-China contest over
01:43Taiwan.
01:43People have flown multiple drones together. That's not the same as a swarm. A swarm really is where the drones
01:50talk to each other.
01:52They interact with each other and ultimately, potentially, carry a payload or a weapon and can drop that weapon on
01:59a target.
02:00Weaving in AI to do that for targeting, automatic targeting recognition, and in this case,
02:06to take a command from someone giving a voice instruction and turn that into a movement or an action is
02:13relatively uncharted territory.
02:15I should say that SpaceX and XAI did not respond to our request for comment, which is pretty normal procedure
02:22for them.
02:22What they are doing is hiring some interesting roles bi-coasterly, but, you know, in the classic talent pools of
02:29Silicon Valley.
02:30What areas?
02:31This is D.C. in the West Coast. And, of course, SpaceX, a long-term defense contractor, but never in
02:37offensive weapons, nothing ever so explicit.
02:39And XAI, I mean, this is Grok, this is X, what we're all going to post this story on afterwards.
02:45They are now hiring for people with clearances, and that's a real change.
02:50And they're looking for people with secret clearance and top-secret clearance.
Comments