Following news that China can give control of a satellite to artificial intelligence, Charles Clancy, senior vice president at MITRE and GM of MITRE Labs, told Fox News Digital that every major company operates satellites with some level of automation. This includes how they manage orbits, schedule data uploads and downloads, as well as optimizing missions.
"As AI has continued to evolve, it has been able to take over more and more tasks from human operators, allowing humans to focus more on the big picture," Clancy said. "Sometimes this advanced automation is code that sits on the satellite, and sometimes it is code that sits on the ground and sends instructions to satellites."