space has become a hotly contested
Battlefield and I don't mean that just
metaphorically space stations with
cannons mounted on them Satellites with
lasers missiles for destroying targets
and missiles for intercepting them have
literally been not only envisioned but
also constructed and launched into orbit
by the great powers of the world some
have even been fired
and although allout War has not begun to
take place between nations in space
countries have prepared for the
eventuality a violent conflict above our
atmosphere for decades they have
designed guns and contingencies and even
the occasional doomsday
weapon would you like to take a look at
what's being
created I'm Alex molan and you're
watching Astron join with me today as we
discuss the past present and possible
future of military weapons in space in
the hopes that it will give us some
insight into how a space-based war
between nations might go and what needs
to happen to avoid
[Music]
it from as early as the 5th Century BCE
writers imagined vehicles or structures
capable of entering space with weapons
capable of riging down destruction Hindu
texts spoke of VI Mana flying chariots
or palaces with flying sorcer likee
qualities that transported their
occupants into the heavens and could
destroy entire cities with their weapons
in the second century Syrian author
Lucien of Samos wrote a short novel
containing such elements as traveling
into space and an interplanetary war
between Dennison of the sun and the moon
but it has only been in the last century
or so that these imaginings could
actually be shaped into a reality as the
first liquid propellant rocket began to
be launched in 1926 suddenly it became
possible to reach higher as a species
than we had ever done before to not just
enter the skies but to pass beyond them
and of course the technology was almost
immediately turned to militaristic
purposes Nazi Germany quickly saw the
advantages of rocketry and began
developing their V2 Rockets which
skimmed the edge of space reaching 80 km
before raining down destruction from the
sky fortunately this breakthrough came
too late in the war to change how it
ended but V2 Rockets became at least the
progenitor of the first human space
weapons they may have only skimmed space
themselves but their descendant the
intercontinental ballistic missile of
1959 was able to enter space
truly it's fortunate that the war ended
when it did as Nazi scientists were
considering other more imaginative
weapons that could be used from space
some of what they were contemplating
seemed the sort of thing you might watch
in a James Bond as early as 1929 Herman
aubert a Transylvanian Saxon born
physicist and engineer who later became
one of the founding fathers of German
rocketry was chalking up designs for a
100 m wide concave mirror that could be
placed in space to concentrate sunlight
into a single destructive point this sun
gun sonen G idea was picked up by German
scientists who dreamed of making the
super weapon a reality they hoped that
its power would allow them to burn
entire cities with its heat again
fortunately the war ended before that
particular Vision could be made a
reality the birth of rockets had a
two-fold effect on Modern space conflict
the first was the increased development
of further and further ranging Rockets
which gained increasingly powerful
payloads accumulating in the nuclear
weapons the superpowers of the world
hold on standby today but the second was
the development of the more commercial
use of space when Sputnik 1 the first
artificial satellite was launched in
1957 Humanity began to realize the space
could be used for more than just a place
to fire weapons from since then we have
launched over 8,000 satellites into
orbit around Earth they contribute
hugely to modern society
through satellite guidance our phones
can know where we are currently and can
guide us to any destination by the
shortest route we can communicate in an
instant with people on the other side of
the world with this economies flourished
and Nations began to realize how
devastating it would be if we ever lost
them
unexpectedly and so a new front opened
up in space conflict the satellite
War Nations began trying to figure out
how to protect their own satellites
while inhibiting the satellites of
others should the need ever
arise different nations took different
approaches to this the Soviet Union in
the early 1960s sought to protect their
own space interests while threatening
others by launching the secretive Almas
space
station this man space station was
unlike any other in history that we know
of as it came with a built-in Cannon
attached to its front forward belly
capable of firing thousands of rounds a
minute it wasn't perfect recoil on such
a powerful weapon was a big issue for
the whole Space Station and it had to be
aimed manually by turning the entire
space station to point at its Target but
this weapon was actually tested in space
in
1975 firing about 20 shells at a gas can
the target the results of the test are
classified so we don't exactly know how
it went but but a few years later
project Almas was scrapped on the
grounds of being too expensive and
inefficient so you can draw your
conclusions
yourself however one of the greatest
weapons of satellites is not in their
destructive power but in their ability
to gain
information satellites can capture
footage of events on the ground in
incredible detail as well as having the
ability to listen in to stray signals
for Espionage
purposes while in 196 6 the United
Nations General Assembly signed into
international law the outer space treaty
making it illegal to place weapons of
mass destruction into orbit and
encouraging the peaceful use of space
using satellites to spy on your enemies
appears to have been deemed fair game
each superpower makes use of satellites
to conduct reconnaissance on sites of
importance about 1 of all satellites are
military owned and are used for this
purpose many such as the large
American-owned Orion satellites can
hoover up all the telephone calls and
signals that telephone Towers radiate
into space using their massive 100 m
diameter
antenna since phone calls stopped
running through wires and started being
broadcast wirelessly it has become much
easier for military organizations to
intercept every single communication
tapping into wires is a thing of the
past your privacy likewise
naturally counter measures to this have
started to arise as Nations and groups
object to their privacy being invaded
like this one interesting modern day
facet of this can be seen at play in the
Russian Ukraine war right now satellites
play a powerful role in modern conflict
allowing military forces to track enemy
combatants and relay that information
back to units on the ground however this
is much less effective in Ukraine ever
since large swats of the battlefield
became subject to GPS Jammers GPS
Jammers work by flooding the bandwidth
used by GPS satellites with noisy radio
signals of their own drowning out the
vital positioning information or
spoofing
it attack drones have played a prominent
part in the Ukraine conflict if you
convince GPS that your city is miles
away from its actual location drones
will attack the wrong site getting
confused about where they are supposed
to go this is an actual technology that
is being employed in a war setting today
it represents space technology being
used as an asset in conventional ground
Warfare that said at the time of writing
no space War where a space Target
attacked another space target has ever
taken place but that's not to say that
nations are not preparing for the
eventuality America and Russia have been
developing anti-satellite missiles or
asaps since the
1950s some have even been fired the US
has launched only one test ASAT which
took down a failing commercial satellite
in 1985 using infrared heat seeking as
guidance and then crashing into it at
24,000 km an hour to destroy it the
kinetic energy alone being enough to
knock the satellite out of the sky
Russia destroyed one of its own
satellites in 2021 with an ASAT of its
own unfortunately that particular test
ended with a satellite splitting into
1,500 pieces of debris that started
orbiting the planet Deb got
threateningly close to the International
Space Station and Russian astronauts had
to Shel it in place to avoid a
life-threatening
situation this is the great difficulty
of modern space conflict and is perhaps
a reason why it is not more common
destroying an enemy satellite might
simply turn it into a ball of debris
that then crashes into other satellites
perhaps even your own which then
disintegrate and hit other satellites in
a growing Cascade of Destruction that
closes off space for everyone this is
known as Kesler syndrome and it could
take centuries before space is safe
enough to travel through once it happens
for this reason there are growing calls
for asaps to be banned from use no one
wants space shut down for everyone
that's about the current state of Space
Warfare however there is one future
technology that might not actually be so
futuristic that might change just about
everything
lasers Yes you heard me right lasers pew
pew indeed while this might sound like
something out of Star Wars real life
companies like lock heed Martin have
developed working prototypes that have
real implications for future conflict
unlike sci-fi lasers real life ones
focus on a target with Incredible
Precision superheating whatever enters
its gaze for too long they come with a
multitude of advantages shooting in
wavelengths outside the visible spectrum
they are both silent and invisible you'd
only know you were being shot by the
fact that the engine of your vehicle was
suddenly a melted
puddle they are precise only your engine
might be melted they come with unlimited
ammo as long as they are on suitable
power grid and they can take out
missiles from kilometers away on a clear
day of course they come with one major
disadvantage they don't necessarily work
if it's not a clear day scattering of
the laser in atmosphere significantly
reduces its Effectiveness as the
particles lose their coherence the
further they travel and if it's a foggy
day or if the enemy Target throws up a
smoke screen the laser can be
neutralized completely it would be
unfortunate if you failed to take down
an enemy missile because it was cloudy
but this might not be an issue for space
conflict as there is no atmosphere in
space a satellite equipped with such a
laser and a suitable solar panel array
could potentially bore through the heart
of other Satellites with ease leaving
their internal components as molten slag
without creating a dangerous debris
field it would be extremely difficult to
see what had done the damage meaning the
secrecy of your satellite would be
maintained your satellite would never
need to be reloaded provided it didn't
need to vent gas as it gained its power
from the Sun and its range would be
vastly increased due to the lack of
atmosphere the only downside would be
the need for a powerful enough battery
pack which given its size and bulk might
be a limiting
factor a few attempts have even been
made at creating a laser weapons
platform in space that could attack
groundbased targets again the appeal of
such a threat is great imagine that a
nation had the capability to instantly
assassinate a Target invisibly and
without warning the moment they stepped
outside there would be no room for
interception the US was working on Space
Bas lasers in 1987 with its project
Zenith star and although that never made
it past ground testing their military
has continued to toy with the idea in
the decade since the USSR nearly
actually launched such a laser the poer
spacecraft in
1987 only for the USSR president kachev
to forbid firing it in case the Western
Government saw this as an aggressive act
as it happens the launched polyer space
laser never reached orbit an error
caused it to burn up in the atmosphere
during launch so the question of whether
to test fire it or not was thankfully
moot these are the attempts we know
about still I would not be surprised to
learn that one nation or another had
secretly put a satellite with a laser
into
space we'd likely not know for another
30 years or so or until it was
used fortunately space conflict to date
has mostly been about hypothetical
preparation more than actual battle even
during the Cold War no Nation actually
has gone so far as to attack another
nation's space asset although many have
sought the capability to do so and more
than a few Sabers are rattling this may
be because if we actually started Waring
in space in Earnest we would be
unleashing some of the most devastating
forces known to
man weapons from space are perhaps the
most destructive Humanity will ever
bring to bear it wouldn't take a Nazi
Sun gun all it would need is the force
of gravity and the realization that with
a little Mass you can redirect one
passing Space Rock to have it become a
multi- kilon nuke as it releases its
kinetic energy in one frantic
moment but like the gun on the space
station Almas such weapons have a habit
of
recoiling taking down enemy satellites
might sound like an ad Advantage but
cesa syndrome Bringing Down the global
economy would be bad for everyone
tactically targeting any enemy with a
space launched asteroid might sound nice
and useful until you remember the
dinosaurs and realize we only have one
single fragile rock to live on
ultimately the risks that come with
space conflict are perhaps the strongest
reason it may never happen I certainly
hope so after all it would perhaps be a
terrible irony and a failure of
evolution if Humanity struggle for
survival against each other ended in
nobody winning and the ruin of us all
what a cosmic un go that would turn out
to
be they are watching
you ever feel that prickle across your
neck that ominous sensation of eyes on
you but you can't detect anyone around
well although they can't spot the
culprit directly your senses might be on
something the Earth is surrounded by
eyes studying you tracking you trying to
understand every aspect of your daytoday
life they are our own satellites and
there are hundreds of them and I don't
think we have quite realized how good
they've gotten
there are satellites with mirrors the
size of hubbles not pointed at distant
galaxies to unravel their Mysteries but
staring down at you there are satellites
that can see through clouds and don't
care if it's day or night they see just
as clearly either way in this age of
information where companies are pushing
for more and more data and governments
strive to keep track of criminals and
threats the thing that might be harder
and harder to find is
privacy are the benefits worth the
cost I'm Alex molan and you're watching
astram and it is time to look out the
nearest window and smile for the camera
there now do you want to see how your
picture turned
out in 1957 the the number of artificial
satellites in space first ticked up
from0 to 1 Sputnik 1 was launched by the
Soviet Union officially to practice
their satellite deployment methods and
to send test radio signals through the
atmosphere but also to show the world
that they were winning the Space Race
the world however did not take long to
catch up in 2007 50 years later there
were 9912 active satellites orbiting the
Earth
as a testament to how quickly the
industry is growing it took only 10
years for that number to reach
1,778 in
2022 the number hit
6,95 and this number is set to grow the
company SpaceX alone wants to eventually
raise the number of active styling
satellites to a whopping
42,000 in the next 10 years there could
be hundreds of thousands of satellites
from various different countries and
private organizations orbiting our
planet of course not all of these
satellites are there for observation
around half of the ones active right now
are communication satellites but still
according to data collected by the UCS
the apply named Union of concerned
scientists at the start of 2022 there
were
1,052 eyes looking down on us that's a
lot of eyes and they're getting
sharper let's discuss spatial resolution
this is a measurement of how many meters
on the ground are represented by a
single Pixel in a satellite taken image
the early cameras on satellites like
lanat 1 had a resolution of 80 M which
is to say a single Pixel represented an
80x 80 M Square meaning you could almost
fit an entire football field in it
this made them good for taking sweeping
images of our planet at large and
perhaps for keeping track of massive
objects like clouds and weather fronts
but there was hardly the sense that our
privacy was at risk now well see for
yourself these full color videos were
taken by Carbonite 2 a commercially
available satellite that captures an
entire 5 km swath as it passes by at 500
km in low Earth
orbit the resolution for this video is 1
M which is good enough that you can pick
out details like the motion of waves on
the sea or cars driving along the road
in real time although you might not be
able to distinguish their car and most
likely not their drivers the advantages
of such a video are obvious transport
officials can keep an eye on traffic
congestion and it becomes easy to track
the speed of urbanization
there are also numerous scientific
benefits which we'll get into later but
there's one undeniable feature of such
improved resolution that made it very
interesting for governments around the
world and the main reason you might be
worried it becomes easier for spy
satellites to keep track of
you spy satellites have also come a long
way originally when the CIA began their
secretive Corona project disguised as an
innocent space exploration program
called Discoverer satellite cameras were
recording their images onto actual film
which then had to be jettisoned and
parachuted back down to Earth where the
capsules carrying the sensitive data
could later be recovered one of these
capsules was actually the first ever
man-made object to be recovered from
space it wasn't the most efficient
system and spy satellites tended not to
last longer than a year before they ran
out of film and capture
now everything is digital significantly
improving the lifespan of such
satellites as for what they can see well
for obvious reasons governments tend not
to reveal how good the resolution is on
their spy satellites however it's
interesting to note that the video I
showed you earlier of the 1 M resolution
satellite camera is not the best the
market has to offer other satellites
boast 50 cm and even 25 cm resolutions
and some such as Umbra s satellite claim
to have reached 16
cm and this is only about as good as
they are legally allowed to get the
United States has laws in place that
make it illegal to have Satellites with
better resolutions than that although
companies are pushing for this
restriction to be lowered so that they
can keep up with a competitive Global
Market that doesn't always have such
restrictions take a note of that though
this is not about capability true the
laws of physics put some constraints on
us that make better resolutions
difficult to Impossible without having a
satellite flly close enough to the
planet that atmospheric drag will start
to cause it to fall or without making a
light Gathering mirror so large that it
becomes difficult to launch them on a
rocket however it's not accurate to say
that spy satellites can't get better
resolution there are rumors of
resolutions hitting at least 10 cm
resolution perhaps even 1
cm rumors that were at least partially
confirmed by the previous US president
Donald Trump by accident in a tweet he
posted in 2019 Iran attempted a rocket
launch that ended in Failure Trump felt
it was necessary to tell the world that
the US government had not been involved
in sabotaging the rocket launch to prove
his point he included a photo of the
damage launch site hoping to show that
there were no signs of Foul Play This
may well have been true but intelligence
experts around the world were stunned at
the crisp detail included in the
image after analysis it was revealed
that the image had to have been at least
10 cm resolution perhaps even better
let's get a feel for what an image
better than 10 cm resolution might look
like on a regular High
Street this is the bit where you might
need to wave to the camera this image is
not a satellite image but was taken by a
plane flying over the town of
Zurich however it does reveal what a
better than 10 cm resolution image can
show we are no longer on the resolution
of making out cars here you can see the
branches on trees even the color of
clothes on people you can see a lot of
detail can you imagine what a 1 cm image
might look
like this represents technology that
exists today in fact better technology
is now out there the satellite that took
this is a keyhole 11 spy satellite a
keyhole 12 already exists which amateur
astronomers have managed to image in
spite of official pictures naturally not
being released to the public we don't
know the resolution on this one but it
has Dimensions similar to the Hubble
telescope and one of the reasons Hubble
used the mirror size that they did was
because they realized they could use the
same supplier as the US Department of
Defense so there are potentially 11
additional hubbles out there imagine how
much further we would be if they were
used for science instead of
spying we are also no longer in an era
where cloud cover or nighttime can
ensure privacy synthetic aperture radar
Imaging is capable of piercing through
clouds as the technology doesn't collect
visible light but instead sends down a
radar pulse and then times how long it
takes to bounce back done enough times
over a wide area with some sensitive
equipment to discern the different times
taken of different parts of the wave to
return SAR satellites can form detailed
physical models of the ground and can
even simulate having a much larger
mirror than they can actually carry
because they are not reliant on natural
light but ascending their own pulses
these types of satellites can work
during the night as well as the
day so with all of this you likely are
starting to feel a little worried for
your privacy it's unsettling to think
that at any time you step out the house
eyes could be on you watching you walk
or drive to your destination seeing who
you meet where you go they are probably
not able to read your phone screen but
that's not far off the cost of privacy
feels huge huge if you live in a city
like London you may have been thinking
this anyway with the number of cameras
around but even where they're are no
cameras you aren't
safe however it should be pointed out
that Satellites with decent resolution
although probably not at the 10 cm Mark
can be extremely beneficial for studying
our planet it's hard to list the
benefits in full but they include
weather monitoring studies of our
climate including sea level rises CO2
levels in our atmosphere tracking
aerosol emissions and seeing the current
dimensions of the ice sheets tracking
surface temperatures crop Health
irrigation use water quality you can
even use precise Satellites with Cloud
penetration to see the hot spots on
wildfires giving firefighters a better
chance at tackling blazes or we can
better understand hurricanes atmospheric
dust clouds and other
disasters in one incredible application
a NASA satellite intended to study
Cyclones was used to track Locust swarms
across Eastern Africa mapping out the
most fertile water-rich areas that
locusts like to lay their eggs in or
feed in during their juvenile
forms in so doing they helped reduce
swarms in Kenya in 2019 which was
incredibly beneficial to Farmers and the
people whose food they
Supply perhaps the bit that feels
uncomfortable is if it seems like the
people watching us do not have our
immediate benefits at heart studying the
planet feels like a positive and worthy
goal and accurate data is helpful in
that however it's also undeniable that
businesses across the world would love
to keep track of where people are
shopping population Trends and other
metrics that allow them to better sell
to customers which is a goal you're less
likely to want to sacrifice your own
privacy for monitoring might help city
planners to keep track of the flow of
traffic on roads and get a better sense
of where to build relief roads or other
helpful interventions spy and law
enforcement agencies also In fairness do
a lot of good they stop terrorism and
catch criminals but it's scary to think
that once the technology is here if ever
the government in possession of it
decides to use it for more invasive
goals there's not much that can be done
to stop
them at the end of the day perhaps this
is something inevitable that we will all
simply have to get used to it's
difficult to stop the flow of progress
as long as there are advantages to
better resolutions on satellites people
will want to pursue developing them in
any case it's at least good to know just
how effective it's all becoming because
then your decisions on the matter can be
informed too you can decide whether this
is becoming something that makes you
nervous or something you aren't really
bothered about whether this needs
tighter regulation through lawgivers or
whether it is a necessary cost to be
paid for the ease and security of Modern
Life wherever you stand on this matter
best put a brave Face On Smile after all
you never know who is
watching there are 8 billion people who
exist in the world today and they are
being watched by things that aren't
human you are being watched right now by
metallic eyes that orbit far above you
outside our planet's atmosphere but they
do not just watch you from space they're
in your computer they listen through
your phone even right now as you're
watching this video be advised something
is watching you back they examine the
patterns of what you buy of where you go
of what you search for on Google all the
data that exists in the world about you
they attempt
scrutinize they are Ai and they are here
to
stay to some degree AI is an aspect of
modern society that we've come to accept
as normal even if we're a little
uncomfortable about it but if you think
we're talking about Only commercial AI
today the algorithms that companies try
to use to convince you to buy things
you're wrong there is something that
governments have been developing that
exists at a level of power and
complexity above that military grade AI
the sord used by surveillance agencies
and Battlefield operators hidden in hard
drives in a secret remote location in
America there is one AI in particular we
are going to look at its name sentient
its goal to predict the
future I'm Alex molan and you're
watching astram join me today as we
discuss the class specified AI that
America is using in its space-based spy
programs one that has so much autonomy
it doesn't just receive data from
satellites it actually directs them what
exactly can sentient do and what does it
mean for Humanity's future both in this
world and of
it obviously as a disclaimer this is a
classified program so there are many
things we don't know but by looking at
the officially publicized statements and
accounts from former officials and by
examining similar commercial AI in the
private sector we can make some pretty
educated
assumptions using AI in intelligence
gathering does make a lot of sense
whether you are a company trying to take
advantage of market trends or a nation
trying to stay on top of threats to your
security it's useful to know what
everyone is doing and also extremely
difficult to properly anal analyze
everything as I mentioned at the
beginning of this video there are 8
billion humans on Earth right now each
one has a complex life filled with
routines Hobbies interests and
affiliations the sheer amount of data
that it would take to keep track of
everyone is overwhelming as illustrated
by how hard it is to keep up with all
your friends on social media to some
degree this is true for space as well
there are approximately 100 billion
stars in our galaxy alone and two
trillion galaxies in the observable
universe if you took as little as a
second to look at each one individually
it would take
6.3 quadrillion years for you to see
them all keeping tabs on so many stars
is a mammoth task beyond the scope of
any one person or even a large group of
people so for surveillance or science
there are immense benefits for the
organiz ation or nation that can troll
through the endless data and find
patterns or anomalies and AI is
extremely good at processing large
amounts of information
quickly this makes it wonderful when it
comes to the world of astronomy as it
can identify interesting observations
for humans to take a closer look at only
AI doesn't care whether we're above the
microscope or beneath it and the sort of
AI that are being used to look at the
actions of humans are becoming much more
powerful than the ones looking at the
stars which is why you may find yourself
in The Uncanny situation of talking
about a subject with your friend and
then suddenly you find adverts for that
same subject on your phone this usually
isn't just coincidence rather this is
your digital footprint being examined
for marketable Trends we all have a
digital footprint every time we make a
transaction visit a web page Log in at a
certain IP address or Google a search
term we reveal a little bit about
ourselves Googling pet stores you
probably have a pet and might be in the
market for pet food or products buying a
plane ticket well if that's a holiday
travel companies might be able to
convince you to buy a hotel room travel
insurance sunglasses swimming suits
businesses are Keen to gain this
information and often we give it to them
freely whenever you see a popup on your
web page asking you to accept cookies
chances are those cookies relate to
tracking what you do on that page apps
on your phone ask you permission to use
your microphone if you grant that
permission without reading it there have
been some unscrupulous cases where
phones use your microphone to listen in
to your day-to-day conversations where
they'll look out for keywords that
information will then then be sold onto
advertisers so they can better know what
to sell you this can already be
unfortunate as you might not want
certain adverts popping up on your
computer a pregnant woman might not want
to tell the world she's pregnant yet but
if AI analyzing her data figures it out
she and her partner might get adverts
for baby gear potentially tipping off
anyone who happens to see their phone
but what happens if we're not just
talking about businesses but governments
then the means of information gathering
become much more vast and the stakes
much higher governments like the US are
interested in protecting the lives of
their citizens from foreign threats and
being able to form a digital profile of
Persons of Interest can be the
difference between a bomb threat being
prevented or hundreds of lives being
lost so governments will use every trick
in the book to to gain as much
information as possible Google searches
shipping patterns spy satellite images
and video Financial transactions weather
reports all these things help paint a
picture but the sheer quantity of
information out there has always made it
difficult to analyze everything to spot
the patterns unless of course you have a
really powerful
ai ai like sentient are not just able to
analyze data to spot patterns sentient
is an automated learning adapting AI
with the ability to direct satellites to
locations of Interest again a lot of the
information about it is classified but
the nro in 2016 did release some
information about it revealing some
Clues as to its abilities sentient is
described in this document as data
ingesting and processing meaning
specialists will feed it vast quantities
of data it is sense making meaning it
will evaluate the data itself to try to
discern patterns of behavior in what
it's seeing if a foreign powers jets are
normally stationed in one air base and
suddenly they're congregating at another
near the border of a neighboring Nation
sentient can conclude that they might be
about to launch an attack and then
sentient can take that one step further
rather than just flag what is ident
identified as interesting sentient is
able to direct satellites to photograph
certain locations to fill in gaps in its
knowledge that's where the learning
adapting part comes in once the
satellites are in place and sentient can
see what they see It'll evaluate the
data and try to predict where it needs
to go next the whole process is
completely
automated how do we know this is real
firstly because commercial companies are
attempting to do the same thing black
sky is using its large numbers of
satellites driven by automated AI to
give buyers foresight by using
space-based intelligence black sky is
attempting to build a picture of what's
happening right now on battlefields and
in foreign countries a repaired Bridge a
new airport being constructed put raw
data like that through the right kind of
analysis Aid driven analysis and there
figuring out what's about to happen too
that new bridge might hint at the need
to transport troops quickly to a new war
zone the airport might serve as a
staging base for fighter jets in a
planned offensive in their own words
through AI they hope to give companies
the chance to act not just fast but
first black sky is scanning ports around
the Black Sea with frequent overhead
flybys of small Satellites with its 15
passes a day
it has made 70,000 ship detections
helping it build a picture of exactly
where Russian ships are and where
they're likely headed and where they
might be
vulnerable this information is part of
the reason Russia has lost so many of
its ships to Ukrainian
attacks and secondly when in 2019 at a
space Symposium a National geospatial
Intelligence Agency executive was asked
directly about how good military and
intelligence Community algorithms have
gotten at interpreting data and taking
action based on those
interpretations they simply responded
that's a great question and there's a
lot of really good classified answers
before swiftly moving on if black sky
can do that it's assumed that sentient
can do that and more black sky does not
just use satellite images though as well
as from 25 satellites it uses data from
40 ,000 new sources 100 million mobile
devices 70,000 ships and planes eight
social networks 5,000 environmental
sensors and thousands of Internet of
Things devices according to a Verge
article on the subject what does
sentient use presumably a lot more a
retired CIA analyst suggested the answer
is everything images financial
information weather records
pharmaceutical purchases all of it
paints a picture all can help identify
patterns or abnormal behavior there are
even reports of it keeping an eye out
for UFOs I'd love to know what it found
obviously the nro isn't Keen to reveal
exactly what sentient is paying
attention to as then foreign powers
could try to manipulate that information
for their own Advantage but the sheer
scale of information it consumes must be
vast and unlike humans who would be
swamped trying to make sense of it all
sentient can swiftly skim through the
noise to identify the key points of
interest is this a
problem yes and no on the one hand it
certainly suggests that privacy is going
to be harder and harder to come by I've
spoken before about how satellite images
are becoming higher and higher
resolution and this could mean
governments can keep tabs on you at all
times now they're not just looking at
you physically they're examining your
social media feeds your spending habits
and more which is fine if you've got
nothing to hide but it's unsettling
nonetheless yet there will always be
benefits sentient will be able to
identify threats which help the
government prepare for them and keep its
citizens safe AI program never tire and
never stop if science ever gets AI of
the same level we might one day see
space missions that are completely
automated AI looking through telescopes
to identify places they want to learn
more about and then launching their own
probes to take a closer look with an
army of data analyzing AI to evaluate
the result a lot of fascinating
discoveries could be made that way if
it's any consolation for American
viewers send is bound by the usual nro
restrictions on when the US can spy on
its own citizens which is not all the
time but don't rest too easy if the US
is developing AI like this it's very
likely that other governments and
private companies are doing the same
thing too even the Pentagon is concerned
about online profiles being built up on
their staff filled with information that
foreign spies might be able to utilize
beyond that problems can arise when our
tools become too powerful I'm not
talking about some terrifying Skynet
scenario but instead what naturally
happens when AI gets powerful enough
that humans will struggle to check its
workings in the UK there was a recent
large Scandal when the accounting system
Horizon that was used by the post office
incorrectly accused about 900 employees
of theft and fraud many of these
employees were prosecuted
simply because the post office assumed
that the information Horizon was giving
it was
correct in New Zealand a woman was
incorrectly identified as a shoplifter
because facial recognition software
struggled to precisely identify men and
women of color leading to a false
positive AI tasked with making
scientific discoveries could make
similar mistakes warping our
understanding of the universe instead of
enhancing it and AI can just as easily
ignore important information if it's
been taught to ignore those things when
in 20123 an alleged Chinese spy balloon
was caught flying over the US officials
realized that their radar was set to
detect things moving at the speed of
missiles but not small and slow things
like balloons when they adjusted their
settings several other balloon-like
objects suddenly showed up on their
Radars and were subsequently shot down
although not all of these later objects
were necessarily spy balloons it does
prove that an object that behaves in an
unusual way can sail right past the
artificial systems designed specifically
to watch out for them AI might be very
good at answering questions but it is
not so good yet at knowing what
questions to ask what happens if
powerful AI programs do not have
sufficient oversight what biases and
assumptions could creep in particularly
for classified AI that not many people
are
scrutinizing it's a concerning thought
AI is here to stay a digital profile is
being created about you and without
proper laws and regulations being put
into place there's not a lot you can do
to stop data broker companies from
selling your personal data Beyond
clicking reject all on those cookie
popups on websites not unless you're
willing to go through the arduous
process C of getting those companies to
delete your information or are willing
to campaign to governments to put tight
restrictions in place I mean that's not
such a bad idea the ability of AI like
sentient to troll through all of that
raw information along with a host of
satellite footage and other sources to
then attempt to predict what will happen
in the future and send satellites to key
locations to see if those predictions
were correct only to make even more
predictions well it's certainly a
powerful tool a slightly chilling
powerful tool it makes perfect sense why
we might want it but it will have an
impact on society and perhaps a similar
impact one day on our relationship with
space perhaps with its predictive
capabilities the only one who will see
what that impact on society will be is
sentient
itself thanks for watching this video
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