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The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

arstechnica.com

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

#91

Post by ls612 »

scottLobster wrote: post #44
merely-unlikely wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On your point about land mines, antipersonnel variants have actually been banned by the UN for a while now - "Anti-personnel landmines are prohibited under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (or Mine Ban Convention), adopted in 1997."[1] As you say, the ethics debate isn't really new. [1] https://www.un.org/disarmament/co…

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…

Both sides in Ukraine are using a ton of land mines both antipersonnel and antitank. When push comes to shove if the weapon achieves some well identified goal well it will be used.

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

#92

Post by xg15 »

alkonaut wrote: post #21
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #6

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…

> That promise will go out the window just as soon as other nations arm ai enabled drones with anti air missiles. Ethics don't go out the window because of autonomy. It's dark, but it's not somehow easy to shrug off as "ok no human then no ethics". We already have semi-autonomous weapons such as CIWS (Goalkeeper/Phalanx) which are autonomous because it's very tedious for a human to sit idle and wait for threats and t…

Computer-controlled weapons have far more opportunity to diffuse responsibility and shift the blame. Notice how often "algorithms" are already used in civilian context as a wall to hide behind. This will only get worse with autonomous weapons.

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

#93

Post by _piif »

gclawes wrote: post #28
daveslash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Man, Incubus was on some great soundtracks back then. Halo 2...

Yupp the song that was playing during the escort in the storm part was great. They did decide to replace it with something completely different for Anniversary interestingly.

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

#94

Post by jareklupinski »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #6

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…

Don't forget the endgame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU

> The last war broke out. All the people are dead, but the machines continue dutifully to follow orders.

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

#95

Post by jki275 »

josho wrote: 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…

We already have those, they're called the Standard Missile.

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

#96

Post by dralley »

kibwen wrote: post #18
josho wrote: 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…

Yet another reason that the trillions of dollars spent on the F-35 have been wasted.

1) The performance envelope minimally relevant given the current state of missile technology.

2) Trillions haven't been spent on the F-35 as others have mentioned. Those numbers are outlays for the total of all R&D + procurement + maintenance for several decades + any specialized equipment needed for maintainence + some other things I can't remember off the top of my head

3) You're years behind the military on this. One of the ideas behind the F-35 is to be able to start integrating unmanned vehicles commanded by the F-35, and be a stepping stone for developing full manned-unmanned teaming for generation 6 fighters.

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

#97

Post by robertlagrant »

LarryMullins wrote: post #64
robertlagrant wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

I think CAPTOR is a deep water anti-submarine device? I agree that a roving band of nearby civilians in a submarine would be at risk, but that's what a war zone is for.

But more generally, I see what you're saying: it's the same problem, but at a different scale - in this case, the scale of "distance from the weapon". Minefields are very localised; underwater anti-submarine mines require a submarine; autonomous aircraft are just the same, but with a much bigger range.

However, I think the range matters. Civilians avoiding a war zone in a ship or a minefield, while bad, is not the same thing as autonomous aeroplanes able to go to a static civilian population and fire at it.

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