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The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter

arstechnica.com

81–90 of 97 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's a stretch, but that was also the premise of Star Trek TOS's 1968 (S02E24) episode "The Ultimate Computer" - M-5 goes rogue and our swashbuckling crew of the Enterprise saves the day. Also.... I saw Stealth in theaters and have not thought about it again until just now. Edit: Oh, and back in 2005 I was big into the band Incubus , and I really dug their song " Make a Move " on that soundtrack.

Thankfully, all we need to do is catch an AI in a logical fallacy and it will explode. On second thought, maybe not the best idea for armed drones...

I think HAL9000 was caught in a logical fallacy. He didn't explode, but...

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

#82

The military industrial complex needs a pipeline of tens of millions of veterans and their families to continue to sway elections and policies in favor of growing the military complex. If we diminish the need for humans in service, we dilute the viability of the pro-military contingent to continue to manipulate our democracy. If removing humans from kill decisions reduces the size of our forces, it might be the feedb…

>removing humans from kill decisions

Is how we get SkyNet.

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

#83

The military industrial complex needs a pipeline of tens of millions of veterans and their families to continue to sway elections and policies in favor of growing the military complex. If we diminish the need for humans in service, we dilute the viability of the pro-military contingent to continue to manipulate our democracy. If removing humans from kill decisions reduces the size of our forces, it might be the feedb…

Aren't most people in the military in non-combat roles like support and logistics? You're talking about replacing the 0.001% or whatever that are fighter pilots with AI as if that would make a difference.

Excellent point. The broader idea of how replacing workers with AI can have neutralizing effects in a democracy (where AI cant vote) was probably shoehorned in here too much.

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

#84
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.

NASA used neural nets for learning flight control back in 2003, so this could potentially use neural nets as well. [1]

Maybe something like a Jetson for the ANN processor? [2] I'm sure NVidia could provide a milspec part for their use.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/IFCS/index.html [2] https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/jetson-nano-ai-computing/

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

#85
post #82

The military industrial complex needs a pipeline of tens of millions of veterans and their families to continue to sway elections and policies in favor of growing the military complex. If we diminish the need for humans in service, we dilute the viability of the pro-military contingent to continue to manipulate our democracy. If removing humans from kill decisions reduces the size of our forces, it might be the feedb…

>removing humans from kill decisions Is how we get SkyNet.

Or Gort. Wasn't Gort a good guy?

Leaving humans in kill decisions is how we got every war until now, probably a kill count in the hundreds of millions. I'm ok trying something else.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's a stretch, but that was also the premise of Star Trek TOS's 1968 (S02E24) episode "The Ultimate Computer" - M-5 goes rogue and our swashbuckling crew of the Enterprise saves the day. Also.... I saw Stealth in theaters and have not thought about it again until just now. Edit: Oh, and back in 2005 I was big into the band Incubus , and I really dug their song " Make a Move " on that soundtrack.

Thankfully, all we need to do is catch an AI in a logical fallacy and it will explode. On second thought, maybe not the best idea for armed drones...

> Thankfully, all we need to do is catch an AI in a logical fallacy and it will explode.

I think that trope came up in the time (of Sci-Fi) when it was thought that an AI would be a logic-based supercomputer of some sort.

Neural network based AI presumably won't suffer from this issue because neural networks do not depend on logic at all for their functionality...!

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

#87

The military industrial complex needs a pipeline of tens of millions of veterans and their families to continue to sway elections and policies in favor of growing the military complex. If we diminish the need for humans in service, we dilute the viability of the pro-military contingent to continue to manipulate our democracy. If removing humans from kill decisions reduces the size of our forces, it might be the feedb…

[deleted]

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

#88
post #35
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.

Accidental reference to an uncannily relevant pair of short films (`Крепость`/`Fortress`, `Last day of war`)

https://vimeo.com/67768281 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiuVInSnTZs

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing my point. A robot can afford to wait and get it right because it has no concept of self preservation. The operator giving the kill/no-kill can afford to wait and get it right because they're not in immediate danger. How would a stressed human in mortal danger be preferable here?

> How would a stressed human in mortal danger be preferable here? https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-s... "U.S. drone operators are inflicting heavy civilian casualties and have developed an institutional culture callous to the death of children and other innocents, four former operators said at a press briefing today in New York." It's a lot easier to be callous towards pixels on a screen, IM…

> It's a lot easier to be callous towards pixels on a screen

What altitude do you think these payloads are dropped from? The targets are pixels on a screen regardless. I think the issue you raised is worth talking about but I think it's orthogonal to the AI issue. The AI kill/no-kill issue can be mitigated via process. Reviews, shorter "deployment", rotations, etc. We aren't creating AI systems to fight Taliban, it's for a future war where real tangible peer threats can touch you. How would you process away or mitigate the scared young grunt or pilot who are facing death?

I'm advocating for humans remaining in the loop btw.

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

#90
post #14
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so? Less humans die and how are they tactically or strategically different from a precise wmd? I.e.: their implication can deter conflict.

I think the main idea is ceding control to a system to make the kill, don't kill decision. This is the "so" part of the article and the comment. With wmds, there are humans who make the choice at the end of the day. The loss of life scale is not relevant as much since we could make ai powered wmds as well, the fundamental question is "can a computer kill?" And maybe more importantly "who is responsible for it making…

It can make a decision to kill but humans who operate it will always be responsible, mistake or not.
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