Fresh Thoughts #106: Swarming Drones and Emerging Behaviours
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Did you see the Chinese New Year light show in Singapore last weekend?
The Legend of the Dragon Gate used 1,500 drones working in unison to create a spectacle.
Culminating in a dragon appearing over the Marina Bay Sands.
It wasn't quite at the level of the fake CGI versions that are easy to be dazzled by online.
But the reality of the achievement was impressive.
At next year's event, I'm sure we will see more drones working closer together, creating a higher-resolution image.
Making the difference between computer imagination and reality tiny.
The display reminded me of Boids.
An idea created in the late 1980s by graphics programmer Craig Reynolds based on watching murmurations of starlings.
Rather than try to model the entire flock, he worked at the localised level of each bird.
Apply three simple rules to each bird:
- separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
- alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
- cohesion: steer to move towards the average position (centre of mass) of local flockmates
What emerged was the natural flowing behaviour found in nature.
This emergent behaviour idea is critical to AI Prompt Engineering and cybersecurity.
A sharp contrast to traditional computer programming.
Software is designed to be deterministic.
Calculating the end-of-year accounts and simulating nuclear reactors must be consistent and repeatable.
But with cybersecurity and AI, the outcome is never deterministic.
It's why you will regularly hear cybersecurity described as a journey or process rather than a point-in-time event.
In cybersecurity, policies and processes are the tools we use to set the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
With the intent that people working within those constraints can complete their jobs effectively while maintaining security.
It's a very different viewpoint from traditional software development.
And although many of the AI early adopters have a developer background, cybersecurity can provide a unique and valuable perspective.
February 20, 20242 Minutes Read
