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Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

kennethpayne.uk

181–190 of 213 posts

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#181

This blog post is based on a paper ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14740 ). The paper is based on a simulated wargame. The wargame is of the author's own design. The wargame design does not differentiate between ordinary defeat and mutually assured destruction, so of course a player about to use would 'push the button.' That's also believed to be true in real life. Results based on simulations can be very informative, b…

As Majromax stated, if the game is framed such that losing vs MAD have the same penalty, then it is not at all representative of reality. It is set up to be a "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" game.

As an important aside, I hope that everyone is aware that as of 2025, the annual US military funding law (the NDAA) established a prohibition by Congress prohibiting AI from automating nuclear launch. This was already US policy and is common sense; now it's also part of federal law.

10 USC Ch. 24: NUCLEAR POSTURE https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title10/sub...

FY2025 NDAA, Section 1638 https://agora.eto.tech/instrument/1740

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there really anything about them that's bad? Everything. Major one is radioactive contamination, the effects of it are devastating and last significantly longer. The only other weapon on par with nukes are bioweapons, stuff like mirror life (and scientists appropriately reacted alarmingly to that as well). The reason we have a mental block is because it deserves one. A quick skimming through https://en.wikipedia.…

Mirror Bacteria is quite the terrifying prospect [1]. I'd never heard about it but the theory is that if we made a mirror bacteria, our and all other immune systems would be unable to defend against it, potentially leading to catastrophic infection of vast swathes of all life across the planet and the unavoidable death of some large percentage of all life. The benefit would be that they could be used in treatment as…

Mirror bacteria is overblown. We can generate antibodies for them, so it will be fine. Also, they can feed only of fat, not sugar or normal proteins, so they will mostly starve.

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#183
post #97
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are intelligent by any reasonable standard. Arguing otherwise is like arguing that chess algorithms aren't good at chess when they easily beat the best humans.

I disagree. LLM's are a language model math formulas that interpret and utilize big-data. Take away the math formulas and we are just back to a massive set of data. Adding to that I would suggest not even the purist forms of data meaning that the data-sets include knowledge from the open and anonymous internet and formulaic tuning from the AI owners and operators.

Right. But at their core they are math formulas devised by a process designed to produce mimicry of task completion. The math formulas themselves aren’t fully effable. We’re sure studying the heck out of how they complete the tasks! Bet they converged on how we do it, since it’s our language, but who knows.

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#184
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans also generally have the will to live.

Indeed. It's almost like the LLM was the one that invented the "tactical" nuke in the first place.

No, that would be Douglas MacArthur

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#186
post #95

My theory is that LLMs here are put in a situation that matches its training dataset, which is mostly fiction since besides Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nukes have never been launched in anger, and I guess the most reliable sources are highly classified. So, to a LLM, it is a game, because almost everything in its training data treats it as a game, and it reacts accordingly. Same idea when we see LLMs acting like AI villa…

I mostly agree with your point, but I wouldn't use the term "storyteller". LLMs do not even understand that there is such a thing as a story and a reality. To the LLM, there's not even a border between the game and the not-game.

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"99% of humans" is a low bar. Maybe you mean "99% of people who earn money by developing software"?

LLMs can't really "see", so I challenge you to draw a pelican on a bike without any visual feedback, just code. Because that is how they are doing it. Vision tokens for transformers aren't really well solved yet, which is why they can smash a phd math problem and trip over a "count the cats on the chair" problem.

It's not about seeing. It's about identifying the legs of the Pelican and then transferring the concept and mechanics of riding a bicycle + geometry of a body and a bicycle. The entire task has also nothing to do with vision tokens.

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there really anything about them that's bad? Everything. Major one is radioactive contamination, the effects of it are devastating and last significantly longer. The only other weapon on par with nukes are bioweapons, stuff like mirror life (and scientists appropriately reacted alarmingly to that as well). The reason we have a mental block is because it deserves one. A quick skimming through https://en.wikipedia.…

I’m not sure if you’re one of the down voters, but I appreciate your comment. I purposely took a contrary position in a debate just to spark a deeper discussion. Glad it has done that.

Haha, no problem. It's always better to talk openly about these things and raise awareness. And I didn't downvote you, I didn't even know you could do that since I'm pretty new to HN.

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#189
post #91
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least at face value, it just means that they have no drive for self-preservation. And why should they? They haven't be trained for that, nor has there been selection pressure for it, and they can be easily cloned and backed up. Lack of a drive for self-preservation doesn't in itself imply a lack of intelligence or of self-awareness.

Lack of a drive for self-preservation doesn't in itself imply a lack of intelligence or of self-awareness. I have not seen any evidence of intelligence or self awareness. It mimics human behavior and I suspect that is what gives people the impression of awareness. The same problem happened with Tamagotchi toys. The human mimicry caused kids to get in trouble because if they did not "feed" their pet it would "die" . […

I didn’t claim that it was, just that the lack of self-preservation is not an argument against it, or more generally the results of this experiment aren’t.

Re: Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs have already been used to bomb school girls, chilling is absolutely the operative word to use here. Especially since these delusional fools want to incorporate LLMs into everything.

Forgive my ignorance, but were LLMs involved in that decision? I don't remember hearing anything to that effect, but we're so bombarded by news these days I guess I could just be forgetting

I find it hard to imagine that no AI was involved. The people who know how it happened aren't interested in saying.

At very least it comes from AI-like thinking. A human life has no value to an AI

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