"The Master Chief has gone rampant."
I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#22A Culture Mind would at least have a clear set of objectives and a plan for how to achieve them? "Bomb everything forever" doesn't seem very like the Culture at all?
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#23Except the Culture are the good guys.
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#24I have had the same hypothesis around the recent operational success of US military interventions, but would agree with other comments here that this is more "vibes" than data. It's been reported that Maven (integrated with Claude) has been used extensively for Iran, but I haven't seen any hard evidence this is directly contributing to greater US military efficiency. I do buy the general thesis that AI would support operation excellence and solve attention problems across concurrent actions. Would be good to see some more reporting or combat analysis to try to measure the contributions of AI (e.g., how many more concurrent aerial sorties are taking place vs equivalent interventions, how many more strikes are "successful" vs past, etc).
EDIT: I see this post has been flagged. Why? I understand it’s political but it seems very much within the site’s ethos. I didn’t get the impression it was AI-writing either.
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#25[deleted]
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#26This is pure delusion. Completely dry of any data, based on vibes and a vague whiff that maybe a chatbot did all the hard work done by hardworking spooks. Effective operations have happened just like this long before chatgpt launched.
The key line "I’m getting a similar sense for the recent US foreign interventions and wars. They all seem to work slightly better than they should." There is no measurement of efficacy here. It feels like these things are working better because the US military is now doing big public things, but that is not necessarily a good change over not-doing-big-public-things.
Yeah, that was exactly where he lost me. The US military doesn't need a remarkable amount of luck for these operations to be tactical successes, tactical risk wasn't the reason previous administrations didn't do them. The element that was missing was a complete disregard for second order consequences, and Claude has nothing to do with that whatsoever.
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#27The prize for the most insane take on the Iran War has been awarded to this piece. Let's see how many days until something else tops it.
"The US has been acting powerful recently..." sure_jan.gif
I can commiserate with this person cooking up a rant based on a faulty initial premise but it's a doozy. Kidnapping heads of state and indiscriminate bombing campaigns with massive collateral damage certainly don't fit my conception of "acting powerful."
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#28I perhaps get where the author is coming from at a very surface level, but the US is acting like a drunk Culture where the Minds face credible accusations of all sorts of abuse, are named something like 'I Got Small Dick, Wannu Make Everyone Think Is Big', have no goal beyond self-enrichment and ships that dump their human passengers into empty space with the promise that if they somehow survive the next time they co…
The analogy is about technology aiding operational efficiency. It ends there. You basically made a dramatic statement about Trump.
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#29"constantly put pressure on the human" In my experience this is the big difference with AI vs humans. It's not superhuman intelligence (although it does have a massive working memory) but rather the ability to just grind on anything you throw at it, long past the point when any reasonable human would have taken a break or given up. "It can kind of be be bargained with. It can kind of be reasoned with. It doesn't feel…
Infinite patience is what I call it. It would be great for a tutor
Re: I'm Getting a Whiff of Iain Banks' Culture
#30We should be more specific about what’s surprising.
The US being able to engage in a very one-sided air war is not surprising. The Gulf War went similarly well and so did the 2003 invasion of Iraq, at first.
I think it’s surprising that attempting to capture or kill a foreign leader actually worked. But I’m not sure if US presidents other than Trump would have tried? Trump has a lot of “you can just do things” energy due to being largely unconstrained by legal or moral considerations, or larger strategic concerns.
Israeli intelligence being able to so thoroughly hack the devices of their enemies clearly has a lot to do with this. What happened to Hezbollah was surprising.