Innovative AI drone will be able to identify and track targets by face
Louis Venus, an American engineer, implemented artificial intelligence and facial recognition into a small commercial drone so that it could chase people at speed. The developer said that it takes only a few hours to set up a drone capable of tracking a target on its own.
He set up the drone to use an object detection model to find people and fly toward them at full speed. The engineer also built a face recognition system into the drone that works at a distance of up to 10 meters. This means that an armed version of the drone can be used to attack a specific person or group of people.
“It took me literally a few hours to create this project, and I realized how scary it was,” Venus wrote. “You can easily attach small amounts of explosives to them and let them fly.”
Venus called himself an “open source absolutist,” meaning he believes in always sharing code and software through open source channels. He is also willing to accelerate AI research despite the disadvantages because he believes that the benefits always outweigh the disadvantages.
The engineer warned that a terrorist attack could be organized using such technologies in the near future. However, people need technical knowledge to develop such a system. Over time, writing software will become easier, thanks in part to advances in artificial intelligence as a coding aid.
Venus said that his experiment showed that society urgently needs to create a drone defense system for civilian spaces where large crowds of people can gather.
