The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a new microchip that when implanted into a drone will make it capable of learning in real-time, without the need for human analysis. The Pentagon say that the chip, known as ‘Eyeriss’, is small enough to fit inside a wide range of mobile devices, has 168 cores (in comparison to smartphones which have 4 cores) and has been modelled on the human brain. They say that the drones, when equipped with this new technology, will be able to strike targets in war zones without the need for human assistance. Dailymail.co.uk reports: For instance, a drone powered by Eyeriss could alert soldiers on the ground once it has identified a target. This would make it potentially more efficient than human teams scrutinising imagery, a desirable technique in modern warfare. The chip has been developed by researchers at the MIT in alliance with Darpa, the Pentagon’s advanced science research department, as well as graphics chip firm Nvidia. Neural networks are usually made using graphics processing units (GPUs), chips found in all computing devices with screens. These brain-like artificial intelligence systems depend on large, multi-core graphics processors to work, which aren’t practical for mobile devices. [...]