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

newscientist.com

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

#231

Post by 4er_transform »

pibaker wrote: post #132
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.

I feel this reflects a deeper problem with letting AI do any kind of decision making. They have no real world experience. They feel no real world consequences. They have no real stake in any decision they make. Human societies get to control their members' actions by imposing real life consequences. A company can fire you, a partner can divorce you, the state can jail you, the public can shame you. None of these work…

Or make them part of the consequences. Give them skin in the game. “Let’s not use AI” is dumb and impossible

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

#232

Post by Macha »

Presumably the AIs do not have much training material that is classified discussions over whether to use nukes, but do have a decent amount of training material from forum posts and fiction where nukes did fly because that’s what smoking guns in fiction do and there’s not much reason to mention them otherwise. I wonder if that had an effect

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

#233

Post by iwontberude »

GTP wrote: post #39
co_king_5 wrote: post #22

[flagged]

One more comment from this account that might seem AI-generated. I hope people aren't unleashing AI agents on HN.

I am glad I formed an active hacker community on Matrix before the proliferation of bots. I will miss Hacker News but I can tell it's going the way of Usenet in 1993. Much love to dang, I will always remember him and his effort fondly. Today's situation is reminiscent of Russ Allbery's famous usenet rant: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

patapong wrote: post #225
serial_dev wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if it was a game, even I used nukes the first chance I got. It’s unfair and sensationalist to claim anything happened because AI recommended using nukes in a nukes war simulator… It’s like saying we are blood thirsty gangsters because we played GTA.

Humans can't stop using deadly violence against police officers in city simulation

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by LorenPechtel »

compass_copium wrote: post #203
ge96 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I briefly got into a "rabbithole" of watching videos about trying to intercept BMs and glide hypersonic weapons, pretty interesting, decoys deployed in space... the outcome seemed to be not good, can't guarantee 100% interception

A missile will always be cheaper than a missile interceptor, and the interceptor will never be a 1:1 kill. Building a missile interceptor system ia a good way to get your strategic opponent to build a bigger stockpile.

Disagree on always being cheaper. Military planners are obsessed with the best weapons, such interceptors are pricey. But look at Israel: Iron Dome. ~$50k/shot. They deliberately built a dumb SAM because it was designed to go against dumb opponents--objects falling freely on a ballistic trajectory. While they are usually facing light stuff that isn't even worth that they have successfully engaged longer range stuff that costs many times what the interceptor costs.

Overall, though, the offense always wins this one because interceptors can only protect a limited area whereas missiles can go anywhere.

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

#236

Post by f38 »

goatlover wrote: post #208
f38 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have no real world experience. They feel no real world consequences. They have no real stake in any decision they make. Why do you let politicians do any kind of decision making?

Politicians can be voted out, forced to resign, sometimes removed from office and even occasionally jailed. They also inhabit the same world a nuclear war would make much less nicer.

Nuclear war aside (we're talking any kind of decision making here) politicians face very small consequences for harmful decisions, usually at most losing that high-paid job (and getting another high-paid job).

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

#238

Post by compass_copium »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #235
compass_copium wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A missile will always be cheaper than a missile interceptor, and the interceptor will never be a 1:1 kill. Building a missile interceptor system ia a good way to get your strategic opponent to build a bigger stockpile.

Disagree on always being cheaper. Military planners are obsessed with the best weapons, such interceptors are pricey. But look at Israel: Iron Dome. ~$50k/shot. They deliberately built a dumb SAM because it was designed to go against dumb opponents--objects falling freely on a ballistic trajectory. While they are usually facing light stuff that isn't even worth that they have successfully engaged longer range stuff t…

Iron Dome is a great example of my point. It is a $50k interceptor designed to take out a propane tank with a rocket strapped to it, not a real ballistic missile like a Scud.

Patriot missiles ($7MM) take out Scuds ($3MM).

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

#239

Post by NedF »

idiotsecant wrote: post #214
yed wrote: post #171

For every study like this, it's worth looking closely at the LLM prompts to understand whether it's being "pushed" in a certain direction. The full source code is here: https://github.com/kennethpayne01/project_kahn_public/tree/m... Key notes from what I could gather from the LLM prompts: The game is framed explicitly as revolving around the use of nukes: >STRATEGIC CONTEXT: This is a high-stakes territorial dispute…

The nice thing about HN is how often posts like this are right in the top of the comments to tell you why the sensational content isn't worth your time.

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