Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

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That might be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Do you really want to be near a nuclear weapon that is controlled by an opaque, unexplainable process? Even without the insane unobservable complexity of machine learning, do you want to be near a nuclear weapon co9ntrolled by a simpler, theoretically explainable expert system "AI"?

Safety critical systems - including nuclear bombs - need to be simple, with realistically-understandable deterministic behavior. The answer to "what would our nuclear weapons do in ${any_hypothetical_situation}" should never be "I don't know".

Even worse, if an "AI" is involved (by any definition of "AI"), that means the control system involves a Turing complete language. Asking questions about the behavior of the control system for a given set of inputs probably shouldn't require solving the Halting Problem.

edit: I suspect these so-called experts need to read the report[1] from the Therac-25 investigation.

[1] http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf

> Do you really want to be near a nuclear weapon that is controlled by an opaque, unexplainable process?

You mean humans?

Jokes aside this idea is awful.

Lol... terminator dark fate sub 1, the parallel. Never before has a movie shown the events that are simultaneously manifested in reality.

Come on down this fall it’s going to be scorching out. I mean the sky will literally be on fire as your mind explodes from both radiation and the insane surelism that was terminator!

According to MAD principles a "safe" deterrent is less effective. Because your adversary must always think you are capable of delivering a retaliation. A perfectly safe system, may prevent that retaliation and invalidate the detterent effect. This issue applies to all technology and human systems connected with nuclear weapons. The outcome of nuclear war is so horrific that no technoogy would ever be good enough.

The solution is to eliminate them entirely and stop creating such insane choices.

> The solution is to eliminate them entirely and stop creating such insane choices.

That solution entails magically ensuring that no one else has such weapons or will develop them.

If we had a way of doing that, we wouldn't even need armies protecting borders. You'd still need minimal border security to ensure individual intruders don't make it through, but why maintain a hugely expensive army if you could ensure that nobody else could create an army to invade you (or anyone else?)

Yeah, there isn't really a solution.

Personally I don't see long term national security as possible with nukes either. Sooner or later a situation will exist where a bad actor is in power. Or they are just launched by accident. And large countries are not guaranteed to be politically stable. These large nations can and do disintegrate.

I think the risk of obliteration without nukes is less bad. I would rather see my country destroyed in a first strike or invaded by a foreign power. I think that would be less bad than a nuclear war.

The funny things is that the USA could easily be defended from conventional attack. And a small sub based detterant would be good enough. And there is a risk in stoking paranoia in your enemy by having large stockpiles. The vast majority of nations have far less conventional defence than the US and still don't want nukes.

I mean wasn't that the point of having nuclear submarines, since they can't easily be located but can deliver enough of a retaliation to bring your victory party to an abrupt end (separately from realizing that the fallout from nuking your enemies is now drifting towards your country anyway thanks to the weather).

> The solution is to eliminate them entirely

Sure, how do you propose to do that?

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