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The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

arstechnica.com

61–70 of 97 posts

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#61

The military always claims they will have a human 'in the loop' to make kill decisions. That promise will go out the window just as soon as other nations arm ai enabled drones with anti air missiles. There's no time for 'human in the loop' when the first to act survives. Thus down the slippery slope we go. In 20 years time we'll probably have aircraft that do figure eights over enemy territory for hours before automa…

> The military always claims they will have a human 'in the loop' to make kill decisions. That promise will go out the window just as soon as The promise is already a farce because autonomous weapons that sense the environment and make unilateral decisions to kill have already been in use for decades now. From low-tech landmines to high-tech ship-classifying CAPTOR torpedoes which fire themselves, a weapon sensing it…

It is new. Landmines can be reasonably clearly demarcated. Torpedoes can only be fired at certain things. AI-powered aircraft have the potential to be flying over civilian populations, or at least near enough to hit them with a missile.

And with landmines - they're hideous and we shouldn't want more things like them anyway.

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#62
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but I think historically that's going to be an anomaly brought on by the unipolar moment of US/Western military dominance, not a moment of ethical enlightenment. The US and its allies were so dominant that they didn't really need landmines to win anymore, and landmines are one of the cheapest effective deterrents their potential enemies could use. So it became yet another requirement for acceptance into the "ru…

> The US and its allies were so dominant that they didn't really need landmines to win anymore, and landmines are one of the cheapest effective deterrents their potential enemies could use. If the US doesn't need landmines, why won't the US ban them? The United States is one of the nations that hasn't signed the Ottawa Treaty?

The US does need landmines. Obama and Biden both committed to reducing America's use of landmines, but both made an exemption for use in Korea.

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#63

The military always claims they will have a human 'in the loop' to make kill decisions. That promise will go out the window just as soon as other nations arm ai enabled drones with anti air missiles. There's no time for 'human in the loop' when the first to act survives. Thus down the slippery slope we go. In 20 years time we'll probably have aircraft that do figure eights over enemy territory for hours before automa…

so... the obvious response to this is anti-drone drones or lasers (lasers can't be dodged by "stochastic movements")... which means things evolve into a robot war... which means we then mutually decide to simulate the war online inside computers and accept the outcome to save money on both sides... which means we end up at PVP multiplayer war... which is where it should have gone to begin with ;)

We should also decommission all the nukes and get world leaders to play DEFCON[0].

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1520/DEFCON

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The military always claims they will have a human 'in the loop' to make kill decisions. That promise will go out the window just as soon as The promise is already a farce because autonomous weapons that sense the environment and make unilateral decisions to kill have already been in use for decades now. From low-tech landmines to high-tech ship-classifying CAPTOR torpedoes which fire themselves, a weapon sensing it…

It is new. Landmines can be reasonably clearly demarcated. Torpedoes can only be fired at certain things. AI-powered aircraft have the potential to be flying over civilian populations, or at least near enough to hit them with a missile. And with landmines - they're hideous and we shouldn't want more things like them anyway.

> Torpedoes can only be fired at certain things.

Yeah, the humans program the torpoedo to discriminate enemy ships from others, and then entrust that classifier to make autonomous kill decisions. How will autonomous drones and missiles work any differently? They're going to be precisely the same; classifiers engineered/trained by humans entrusted to make decisions to kill. They might shoot a city full of civilians, and a CAPTOR torpedo might shoot a ship full of civilians too. It's nothing new, it's more of the same brought to a wider scope than before.

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#65
post #2

FYI Hollywood made a movie about this very subject, Stealth from 2005. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382992/ The plane goes rogue but humans ingenuity saves the day.

I know it's a stretch, but that was also the premise of Star Trek TOS's 1968 (S02E24) episode "The Ultimate Computer" - M-5 goes rogue and our swashbuckling crew of the Enterprise saves the day. Also.... I saw Stealth in theaters and have not thought about it again until just now. Edit: Oh, and back in 2005 I was big into the band Incubus , and I really dug their song " Make a Move " on that soundtrack.

Thankfully, all we need to do is catch an AI in a logical fallacy and it will explode.

On second thought, maybe not the best idea for armed drones...

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no time for 'human in the loop' when the first to act survives. Of course there is. "AI" controlled hardware doesn't care about getting out alive. A human is more likely to have an itchy trigger finger because a mistake means death.

"AI" controlled hardware doesn't care about anything . A human is more likely to say "wait, this order doesn't make sense" or "what if those are just civilians?"

You're missing my point. A robot can afford to wait and get it right because it has no concept of self preservation. The operator giving the kill/no-kill can afford to wait and get it right because they're not in immediate danger.

How would a stressed human in mortal danger be preferable here?

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#67
post #2

FYI Hollywood made a movie about this very subject, Stealth from 2005. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382992/ The plane goes rogue but humans ingenuity saves the day.

It's the plot of quite a few animes. At least a few episodes of Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell SAC. Although in these cases it's AI controlled tanks or mechs.

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#69
post #35
post #12

What will be interesting is when we design a fighter that doesn't have to accommodate a person. Its size can likely shrink and its performance envelope can be completely re-thought. E.g. Similar to the move from pets to cattle in computing. A jet fighter can very much be considered disposable and swap safety features for additional payloads. The squadron could first coordinate in a pattern far more sophisticated than…

Would be the last war.

That's what they said about the previous war.

Re: The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

#70
post #26
post #12

What will be interesting is when we design a fighter that doesn't have to accommodate a person. Its size can likely shrink and its performance envelope can be completely re-thought. E.g. Similar to the move from pets to cattle in computing. A jet fighter can very much be considered disposable and swap safety features for additional payloads. The squadron could first coordinate in a pattern far more sophisticated than…

Another option with the No pilot model is that there isn’t a need to have a large capability revealing fleet flying around all the time. Everything is done small s ale or in software until go time arrives. This theory is in the latter part of Tyler Rogoway’s “The Alarming Case of the USAF’s Mysteriously Missing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles” https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case...

I didn’t think about the military pilot shortage or not having to train drones.
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