Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles • Hacker News Board

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#71

Post by ddalex » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #62

>such computer systems would be able to think for themselves, scouring huge amounts of data, including satellite imagery, with a speed and accuracy beyond the capability of humans, to look for signs of preparations for a missile launch Replace "a missile launch" with "a peaceful protest" and the statement suddenly becomes dastardly. The increasingly authoritarian Chinese government would absolutely adore a technology…

But the Chinese already do this, it's just not that automated, and it relies on vast amounts of cheap manual labour.

Or you don't think the internet filters itself at the border of China.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#72

Post by vntok » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #62

>such computer systems would be able to think for themselves, scouring huge amounts of data, including satellite imagery, with a speed and accuracy beyond the capability of humans, to look for signs of preparations for a missile launch Replace "a missile launch" with "a peaceful protest" and the statement suddenly becomes dastardly. The increasingly authoritarian Chinese government would absolutely adore a technology…

> Government-sent postmen would be able to walk past every single door in the country every morning and [deliver mail].

Replace "deliver mail" with "look through the windows and write down what they see" and the statement suddenly becomes dastardly.

See what I did there? I took an random situation and made it instantly negative and big-brotherish just by invoking an imaginary narrative.

Conspiracy theories just don't help advancing arguments.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#73

Post by Sophistifunk » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

Do you want Skynet? Because this is how you get Skynet.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#74

Post by sulam » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

I'm kind of sad that we have enough imagery of nuclear missiles being fired to train the model and verify it. :/

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#75

Post by make3 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #31

forapurpose wrote: post #12

> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…

Wait until the military figures out that AI is close enough over the horizon that a Manhattan style project will most likely be able to achieve a self-improving AI. There will be untold funds dumped into it to head off the 'enemy' at the pass because whoever gets it first might be able to stop others from ever achieving parity (or so it will no doubt be reasoned). For all our benefits I hope this is a lot harder than…

this is basically what Deepmind is doing

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#76

Post by make3 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #12

> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…

ai definitely needs a lot of people (researchers, to invent or at least apply the AI) and money (to pay the researchers, get good ones), and the quality of the program is definitely correlated with the money invested

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#77

Post by jMyles » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:05 AM UTC

vntok wrote: post #72

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #62

>such computer systems would be able to think for themselves, scouring huge amounts of data, including satellite imagery, with a speed and accuracy beyond the capability of humans, to look for signs of preparations for a missile launch Replace "a missile launch" with "a peaceful protest" and the statement suddenly becomes dastardly. The increasingly authoritarian Chinese government would absolutely adore a technology…

> Government-sent postmen would be able to walk past every single door in the country every morning and [deliver mail]. Replace "deliver mail" with "look through the windows and write down what they see" and the statement suddenly becomes dastardly. See what I did there? I took an random situation and made it instantly negative and big-brotherish just by invoking an imaginary narrative. Conspiracy theories just don't…

I think you're being unfair.

You've conflating the much simpler task of changing the label with a much broader change (ie, throwing away the entire practice in favor of a completely different and more difficult one).

Which do you honestly thing is more realistic and more consistent with what we know of the history of the state?

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#78

Post by rangibaby » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:49 AM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #67

otoburb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and population. I thought that military power depended primarily on the quantity of population and materiél . The latter is driven primarily by wealth, but also relies on building, operating and maintaining a manufacturing and industrial base. Smarter software will help equalize and hopefully reduce coordination costs (i.e.…

Good point about materiél. When I wrote the GP, I tried to think of a country with wealth (and population) that lost a war due to a lack of manufacturing capacity and couldn't come up with one, so I stuck with 'wealth'. Honest question: Can anyone think of such a place? I'm not including countries that had manufacturing capacity but didn't use it for military purposes. > Smarter software will help equalize and hopefu…

Germany and Japan. The USSR and USA both completely dominated them in terms of industrial capacity.

Germany in particular had about a 10-year head start in terms of weapons (strong tanks, jet fighters, assault rifles, drones, ballistic missiles) but simply could not build enough to make a difference.

Japan had a large population and plenty of soldiers to spare at the end of WWII but again couldn’t compete with Allied manufacturing. It was a fact they were aware of before the war.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#79

Post by Taniwha » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #14

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US nuclear triad is way out of date and potentially vulnerable to a first strike. How are nuclear submarines vulnerable to a first strike?

There's just a handful of Ohio class subs and all of them should have been replaced by more modern and stealthier designs by now. It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar. And even if most of the active subs survived it might not be sufficient to ensure MAD because they don't carry all that many SLBMs.

but MAD is a very bad thing - why would we want this thing to work at all - the more that fail the better off we all are

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#80

Post by ethbro » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #65

ethbro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and population. You're describing network-centric warfare [1], which was formalized in US military theory in 1996 (22 years ago) and has guided US military doctrine since. I'm going to put th…

> You're describing network-centric warfare ... It's from an (at least somewhat) seminal paper about 10 years old from a leading defense think tank, and others discuss it too. The paper was about the future of warfare, particularly the influence of AI and robotics, and not past doctrine. It was highly respected in the defense community, AFAIK, so perhaps we shouldn't assume that HN posters are idiots who don't know w…

Care to cite? I'd be interested in which paper you're talking about.

As for the barb, I wouldn't have dropped it if you'd cited / summarized more concisely. Past some word count without citation or reference, I assume people assume that I believe my thoughts are novel (and by extension, that others haven't thought of them).