AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations • Hacker News Board

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#21

Post by xiphias2 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Why is this surprising? Nuclear weapons are available. AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences. Nuke 'em seems like the obvious choice --- for something with a grade school mentality. Similar deficits in reasoning are manifested in AI results every day. Let's fire 'em and hire AI seems like the obvious choice --- for someone with a grade school mentality and blinded by greed.

,,AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences.''

People in the world have limited experience about war.

We're living in a world where doing terrible things with 1000 people with photo/video documentation can get more attention then a million people dying, and the response is still not do whatever it takes so that people don't die.

And now we are at a situation where nuclear escalation has already started (New START was not extended).

It would have been the biggest and most concerning news 80 years ago, but not anymore.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#22

Post by co_king_5 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#23

Post by jqpabc123 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

co_king_5 wrote: post #13

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Why is this surprising? Nuclear weapons are available. AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences. Nuke 'em seems like the obvious choice --- for something with a grade school mentality. Similar deficits in reasoning are manifested in AI results every day. Let's fire 'em and hire AI seems like the obvious choice --- for someone with a grade school mentality and blinded by greed.

[dead]

Someone's getting nervous about being replaced by AI

Are you an AI? Because your conclusion may seem obvious enough but suffers from lack of input.

I run my own company so I can't be replaced by AI. And I do look forward to competing against AI converts in the marketplace.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#24

Post by FrustratedMonky » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #10

daily reminder that john von neumann, smarter than me, you or anyone else here, recommended a first strike on the soviet union as the obvious strategy maybe intelligence isn't the only thing

Who knows. At the time, maybe it would have stopped decades of cold war.

For thousands of years, the culture with the upper hand in technology has always wiped out everyone else. So when US had the bomb and USSR didn't, there was a short window to take over the world. Even more than the US did.

Maybe the US conspiracy theory people wouldn't mind a 'one world government' if that government was actually the US.

And unipolar worlds seem to be more peaceful than fragmented worlds. Fragmented worlds get WW1.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#25

Post by nsavage » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Why is this surprising? Nuclear weapons are available. AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences. Nuke 'em seems like the obvious choice --- for something with a grade school mentality. Similar deficits in reasoning are manifested in AI results every day. Let's fire 'em and hire AI seems like the obvious choice --- for someone with a grade school mentality and blinded by greed.

If anything, this probably shows their reddit heritage.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#26

Post by engineer_22 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Why is this surprising? Nuclear weapons are available. AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences. Nuke 'em seems like the obvious choice --- for something with a grade school mentality. Similar deficits in reasoning are manifested in AI results every day. Let's fire 'em and hire AI seems like the obvious choice --- for someone with a grade school mentality and blinded by greed.

What's being revealed is "Nuke 'em" is an optimal strategy for the goal. It may be the only viable strategy in the scenarios presented.

Change the goal, change the result. Currently, leading nations of the world have agreed to operate a paradigm of mutual stability. When that paradigm changes we start WW3.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#27

Post by josefritzishere » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

The world presents us new reasons to hate AI every day.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#28

Post by jonathanstrange » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Why is this surprising? Nuclear weapons are available. AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences. Nuke 'em seems like the obvious choice --- for something with a grade school mentality. Similar deficits in reasoning are manifested in AI results every day. Let's fire 'em and hire AI seems like the obvious choice --- for someone with a grade school mentality and blinded by greed.

This probably has more to do with the training material. There should be far more stupid social media posts in it than serious books about diplomacy and war. I've seen people recommend online to nuke other countries for all kinds of reasons. No matter how careful the designers of AIs are, these will always get a large amount of their training data from idiots.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#29

Post by gmuslera » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #11

Welcome to the cold war 1980's movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames Except this time isn't going to be a movie.

It concluded that the only winning move in the global thermonuclear war was not to play. That is what separates works of fiction from reality.

Re: AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

#30

Post by embedding-shape » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #21

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Why is this surprising? Nuclear weapons are available. AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences. Nuke 'em seems like the obvious choice --- for something with a grade school mentality. Similar deficits in reasoning are manifested in AI results every day. Let's fire 'em and hire AI seems like the obvious choice --- for someone with a grade school mentality and blinded by greed.

,,AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences.'' People in the world have limited experience about war. We're living in a world where doing terrible things with 1000 people with photo/video documentation can get more attention then a million people dying, and the response is still not do whatever it takes so that people don't die. And now we are at a situation where nuclear escalation has alread…

> People in the world have limited experience about war.

Right, but realistically, how many people today would carelessly chose "Nuke em" today? I know history knowledge isn't at its all time high directly, and most of the population is, well, not great at reasoning, but I still think most people would try to do their best to avoid firing nukes.