The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) just announced that their AI pilot program ACE has moved out of computer-simulated dog fights to flying real F-16s. The flights occurred at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and a safety pilot was on board the plane to take control if anything went wrong, but nothing did. Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan "Hal" Hefron, the DARPA program manager for ACE said, "We conducted multiple sorties [takeoffs and landings] with numerous test points performed on each sortie to test the algorithms under varying starting conditions, against various simulated adversaries, and with simulated weapons...