Artificial Intelligence is Good at Less Exciting Military Roles Too

I've received a lot of feedback regarding my last few columns about drones, simulations and new uses for artificial intelligence. My most recent column about creating an AI that could task the kind of swarm intelligence found in bee colonies to do some amazing things, like controlling weather satellites, in particular generated a lot of buzz. Much of the feedback I received was from federal agencies and IT companies working on futuristic AI programs. I'll probably be highlighting some of them in the near future. But there was also a note from a company called Hypergiant about how they were working with the Army's Robotic Combat Vehicle program not for some advanced combat project, but simply using AI to help with predictive maintenance tasks.