Drones are often used by the military, but so far they’ve always had human oversight Senior Airman Cory Payne/USAF/REX/Shutterstock

The US Army wants to develop small drones to automatically spot, identify and target vehicles and people. It may allow faster responses to threats, but it could also be a step towards autonomous drones that attack targets without human oversight.

The project will use machine-learning algorithms, such as neural networks, to equip drones as small as consumer quadcopters with artificial intelligence. Current military drones have little onboard intelligence, sending raw video back to analysts who pick out and identify targets. …