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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

#31

Post by moremetadata »

misterprime wrote: post #24
moremetadata wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what this decade old fighter jet is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Taranis One of the reasons for it being pilotless is it can fly moves/turns that create G forces no human pilots could stand with their jump suit. But you know, Taranis has all gone very quiet, slipping out of the public's memory.

This either slipped my mind or I missed it back then. I have this nagging suspicion that I did see this news back then. The "memory hole" efforts were successful, though. Thanks for the notice/reminder!

I think the internet is one giant behavioural and memory test, using search engines, various websites, news orgs to test people en-mass in secret but plain sight.

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

#33

Post by merely-unlikely »

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…

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/convarms/landmines/

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

#34

Post by pmarreck »

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…

so... the obvious response to this is anti-drone drones or lasers (lasers can't be dodged by "stochastic movements")... which means things evolve into a robot war... which means we then mutually decide to simulate the war online inside computers and accept the outcome to save money on both sides... which means we end up at PVP multiplayer war... which is where it should have gone to begin with ;)

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

#35

Post by linhns »

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…

Would be the last war.

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

#36

Post by MisterTea »

ck2 wrote: post #15

It's not the fighters you have to worry about. It's the 24/7 always in the air drone bombers with AI that have zero hesitation to murder civilian targets on demand or by "accident".

Sorry. I dropped chilli on my screen and when I wiped it off I accidentally right swiped and carpet bombed Manhattan.

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

#37

Post by Symmetry »

N_A_T_E wrote: post #3

I assume this "AI" is nothing like the neural networks that have made such great strides recently. A lot of pre-programmed boolean logic.

I really doubt it. Probably a Kalman filter for tracking its own position and some classic tree-search AI for path planning. Maybe neural networks for identifying sensor contacts though.

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

#38

Post by einpoklum »

ck2 wrote: post #15

It's not the fighters you have to worry about. It's the 24/7 always in the air drone bombers with AI that have zero hesitation to murder civilian targets on demand or by "accident".

It's not the fighters you have to worry about, since those just take out whatever military may or may not be defending your country from the US. The ubiquitous surveillance cameras connected to private and governmental servers, monitoring and recording your activity, and running AI to profile you, is more worrying, since that's going to be most of your future life, not the air-battles.

And if I were to write this 20 years you might have still dismissed me as a kook or doomsday prophet, but now one could argue that's already half-implemented anyway rather than a description of a future dystopia.

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

#39

Post by hulitu »

ck2 wrote: post #15

It's not the fighters you have to worry about. It's the 24/7 always in the air drone bombers with AI that have zero hesitation to murder civilian targets on demand or by "accident".

You mean like the killings of BinLaden right hands, when a lot of civilians were killed as collateral victims ?

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

#40

Post by jonnybgood »

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…

The only time where there is any possibility of removing the human from the loop is at the advent of AGI.

There are many factors on and off the battlefield, such as the domestic and geopolitical spheres, that go in to targeting. Only at the minimum level of an AGI that’s capable of understanding human intentions and situational nuances can potentially remove a human from the loop.

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