U.S. Marines Outsmart AI Security Cameras by Hiding in a Cardboard Box

Former Pentagon policy analyst Paul Scharre has recalled the story in his upcoming book Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In the book, which will be released on February 28, Scharre recounts how the U.S. Army was testing AI monitoring systems and decided to use the Marines to help build the algorithms that the security cameras would use. They then attempted to put the AI system to the test and see if the squad of Marines could find new ways to avoid detection and evade the cameras. To train the AI, the security cameras, which were developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Squad X program, required data in the form of a squad of Marines spending six days walking around in front of them. After six days spent training the algorithm, the Marines decided to put the AI security cameras to the test.