US Air Force says AI-controlled F-16 has been dogfighting with humans
theregister.com
theregister.com
For example, using long range radar the pilot selects several enemy jets, and directs the drones to engage those jets. Or the pilot can direct a drone to go ahead of his formation to penetrate hostile air space and collect data he can use to decide next steps.
ACE creates a hierarchical framework for autonomy in which higher-level cognitive functions (e.g., developing an overall engagement strategy, selecting and prioritizing targets, determining best weapon or effect, etc.) may be performed by a human, while lower-level functions (i.e., details of aircraft maneuver and engagement tactics) is left to the autonomous system.[0]
Eventually this will be integrated with the F35[1] reducing risk to human pilots.
0. https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution
1. https://breakingdefense.com/2022/09/lockheed-investing-100m-...
I believe China has already passed this point. Their culture and individual behavior is tightly controlled (e.g., you can't use public bathrooms if your social score is too low).
AI may be the catalyst for western countries.
Is the claim that the frequency of revolutions scales inversely with internet penetration? Because this is trivially testable and obviously false. (Ukraine and Tunisia off the top of my head.)
do you have a source on this? i have used dozens of public bathrooms in china and i've never seen any of them gated off for specific people for any reason or anyone checking anything before you go inside
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/40510238/in-xinjiang-china-some-...
On the other hand, for the state to use JDAM against the individual, they need to know that said individual is there and is worth targeting, for starters.
I don't think it's accurate to say that the balance of power has shifted on the whole, but regular individuals definitely have access to way more destructive power than they ever had in history. At the same time, modern military technology, while very destructive, is also very demanding in terms of logistics. Even a single blown up railroad, fuel depot, large transformer etc can have a profound effect.
The destructiveness isn't always a positive, either. Any modern military can easily reduce even a very large city to rubble, but to what purpose? A city is only valuable in the grand scheme of things because of its infrastructure and its population that can utilize that infrastructure for some useful economic purpose.
While I understand the purpose of HN is to have meaningful and in-depth discussion, and simply stating an opinion doesn't really contribute much, this is something which is so obviously bad and gives such a visceral reaction that the negative opinion outshines anything else I could say about it.
I don't like this.
You’d prefer we be shooting down people instead of robots downing robots? Insurgents don’t field fighters.
More seriously tho, here is a positive I can come up with: Race to the bottom on bots and AI, lots and lots of bots and AI, lots and lots of upgrades and updates all the time, and then a MAD stalemate situation again because it becomes it's too difficult to assess the capabilities of the other countries AIs. If that bought us years of peace because everyone was to scare to fight, I'm ok-ish with that (although I doubt it's what will happen).
At the expense of the personal (human) freedom.
For a given amount of shooting, the number of civilian casualties is not necessarily constant. It's possible that AI may be more prone to targeting civilians or makes it easier to get away politically with killing civilians.
Not all shooting is equally effective. It's possible that AI weapons may give some faction the ability to crush anyone who opposes them.
We already have this with ranged weaponry and autocrats indifferent to the liquidation of fresh troops.
> the number of civilian casualties is not necessarily constant
Civilians aren’t dogfighting. I’m with you for ground-based robots, or anti-personnel drones.
For a non-peer adversary, our bombers are already invincible. For peer adversaries, the threat model is similar to missiles.
Technically no, since a bomber isn’t intended to be expendable. But functionally yes.
AI bombers are not cruise missiles. They must avoid or deal with radars, flak, SAMs, and fighters.
The life of a 21st century bomber is closer to playing several games of chess at once than it is to playing at bein a cruise missile.
Ironically, all this does is guarantee a greater willingness to reach for the violent solution.
Reminds me of an old sci-fi story where the U.S. and U.S.S.R. both create self-replicating autonomous machine armies and flee underground to let the machines duke it out.
The machines eventually realize fighting each other is pointless, and both start just making sure the humans don't surface until they are capable of living without being crazy asshats. Wish I could remember the title.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39802157
[1]https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff...
I mean, it's not like they restrict who can have an account here...
By way of analogy, most people who enjoy the protection of the military are opposed to the use of chemical or biological weapons. They recognize that how people fight is also important.
Perhaps if they live in Ukraine, but otherwise that looks like a tough sell.
But, if I may, I'd like to challenge your premise somewhat as well. Which is that militaries exist fundamentally to provide "stability and protection".
To be clear, yes militaries are a necessary evil, but they are evil, not good. They exist "because the other guy has one", but then because we have one, we need to use it.
With a few exceptions (ww1, ww2, kuwait) US military adventures have been the problem, not the solution.
The last attack on US soil (Pearl Harbour) was close to 100 years ago. Yet the US military budget is 5 times everyone else combined.
So, I'd argue, the US military does not exist to provide "stability and protection (to US citizens)." It exists as a way of projecting US policy, both as a threat, and occasionally in practice.
9/11
I excluded 9/11 though because it's not a military action, wasn't rebuked with military action (at the time) and wouldn't have been prevented with military action.
It is best described as a terrorist attack. The prevention of which is a security function, not a military function.
The existence of a military did of course big a military response, one being an unprovoked attack on Iraq, and the other being a 20 year occupation of Afghanistan which achieved nothing.
I see them more afraid of military power becoming commoditized (raging a war coming down to a straight economic calculus, more so than even it is now) with very little ethical control. Having people in the cockpit pulling the trigger was a line to cross.
You're focusing on the danger of sitting in the cockpit, they're focusing on the danger of having no one left actually thinking about pulling the trigger. I don't see the two as conflicting, you can have a drone with still a human making the decisions and being accountable on each of the strikes.
Not having domestic people die is uncrontroversial, making the military accountable is a way bigger challenge, so I'd see putting a lot more thought on that part to be a healthy stance.
In particular sense's point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40082550
> There's an inflection point where technology accrues too much power to a ruling class, such that no amount of unrest or revolution is able reset the social order.
Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40076620
The people were fungible. Mercenaries show that. Soldiers were and remain instruments for production to wield its power through.
The World Wars shocked us because they showed what war between technologically-advanced, industrial states looks like. (We didn’t get horrified by the Holocaust until well afterwards.) There are a variety of reasons we haven’t seen WWIII, chief among them nukes, but what it hasn’t been is aversion to loss of soldiers’ lives. (See: Russia.) As a result, conventional war between industrialised states remains a risk. These technologies—which are principally useful against another state actor and not civilians—reduce the frequency at which that warfare destroys lives versus capital.
(One could argue this increases the chances of war by industrial states against static-army enemies or non-states. But an F-16 flying over Afghanistan is already practically invulnerable.)
Contrary to popular opinion, the atrocities committed by the Nazis was not a secret. The extent of those atrocities, perhaps, but the newspapers of the day contained stories of those terrible deeds.
Now, the treatment of Allied POWs held in Japan, for the most part, was a surprise, at least for civilians, and from what I've read, many in the military as well.
First, the difference between "bad things" and "atrocities" is the extent or severity.
Second, everything I've seen indicates people did not know a lot of what was going on.
The internet was not a thing. News was being gotten via short videos prior to movies at the movie theater. It was significantly delayed compared to news these days.
Soldiers were shocked at what they found when they liberated concentration camps.
A game was created to explain to modern peoples or demonstrate how this could be engineered while keeping most participants in the dark. People delivering train loads of people to concentration camps didn't know the full story.
Etc.
I’m open to it.