Will Collaborative Human-Brain Drones End Human Pilots?

06 November 2023

As AI technology moves ever faster, it feels like humanity is racing to build the software-based sword of its own destruction—at least if you're into the fictional Skynet plot device of the Terminator films.

But then, reality can sometimes deliver quite a wake-up call...

For example, China has reportedly developed "human-brain drones" that can collaborate just like, well, people.

The drone swarms can engage in group chats to discuss and assign jobs or tasks using human language to communicate.

While drone-swarm software has been typically devised to emulate the communication used by ant and bee colonies, the scientists believe this new human-language technology can help improve areas such as search and rescue and airborne security patrols.

Thankfully, the human-language protocol lets actual people eavesdrop on the drones and their plans. Whew.

The development of this group-chat tech comes from Li Xuelong and the School of Artificial Intelligence, Optics and Electronics at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shaanxi.

It's amusing that what kicked off all of this is a very common and frustrating human problem—losing your keys.

A demonstration video relased by the university stars a five-drone team successfully locating a set of keys in an outdoor park.

“The drones showcased abilities such as human-like dialogue interaction, proactive environmental awareness, and autonomous entity control to adjust flight status in real time,” stated a report on WeChat.

The “human brain” inserted into each drone is based on a Chinese open-source language model called InternLM, and the dialog capabilities are designed to enhance communication between human beings and machines.