[HN Gopher] The AI war and how to win it
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The AI war and how to win it
        
       Author : hardmaru
       Score  : 66 points
       Date   : 2022-11-28 00:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (alexw.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (alexw.substack.com)
        
       | blacksqr wrote:
       | It's funny that OP doesn't realize "the AI war" will be between
       | the AI and all of humanity.
        
         | tetraca wrote:
         | It won't. It'll be a war between the people and entrenched
         | power structures who will use very primitive AIs to crystalize
         | their position at the expense of everyone else. What rich man
         | or government would ever fear riot or revolution when you can
         | use data mining algorithms and precision drones to liquidate
         | even the most minor whiff of dissent at the push of a button?
         | They will eat everyone else with specialized drones as sapient
         | as insects before truly human AI is a thing.
        
       | salamo wrote:
       | I tend to worry about the opposite problem: what if the United
       | States is successful in deploying artificial intelligence? In the
       | article, the author uses the United States interchangeably with
       | the concept of liberal democracy, which I believe is a fair
       | assumption today. However, I worry that many of the author's
       | calls to soak up more and more information for the purposes of
       | military supremacy will cause irreparable damage to our political
       | system. Artificial intelligence has the tendency to centralize
       | power in the hands of a small number of people, and breakthroughs
       | in AI are likely to exacerbate this trend. In short, the US might
       | win this hypothetical war, but at what cost?
       | 
       | The way I see it, there are three kinds of technologies: A) those
       | which tend to centralize information or control B) those which
       | are essentially neutral and C) those which democratize
       | information and control.
       | 
       | Group A artificial intelligence capabilities are not hard to
       | imagine. Ubiquitous surveillance is a good example. Many current
       | AI technologies are great for surveillance and can dramatically
       | reduce the marginal cost of surveilling a person. For an
       | autocracy this is great. For a liberal democracy, it threatens
       | civil liberties and reduces trust.
       | 
       | Group B technologies are things like self-driving cars, precision
       | agriculture, and AI-facilitated entertainment (e.g. recommender
       | systems, Dall-E). These are things which I don't see as
       | fundamentally helpful or harmful to liberal democracy. Another
       | way to look at these technologies is that both autocracies and
       | democracies should be equally amenable to developing and using
       | them.
       | 
       | I can't think of any Group C technologies and this worries me.
       | These are AI-enabled technologies whose effects are
       | disproportionately democratizing. A democracy should seek these
       | out while an autocracy will ban them.
        
         | pshc wrote:
         | The consensus algorithms used by cryptocurrency fit into group
         | C.
         | 
         | Smart contracts are programmable incentive mechanisms. I am
         | hoping we figure out how to use them to coordinate
         | productively, rather than for financial schemes.
        
         | zapataband1 wrote:
         | I feel like it's just to difficult to pin down what area of ai
         | will improve. For example what about an AI that is relatively
         | powerful at brute force decryption(not sure if this violates
         | some thermodynamic principle). Or even just an AI that can
         | easily find exploitable websites. Things like that destroy
         | trust in systems and probably large systems like gov or
         | corporations have more to lose if information is up for grabs.
         | But maybe it's the opposite way around. Hard to tell imo
        
       | bugfix-66 wrote:
       | 43 days ago I asked this question:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33215740
       | 
       | This question got voted down everywhere I discussed it on Hacker
       | News, but somehow the submission itself got 11 points.
       | Apparently, it is an offensive question to some silent, pro-
       | censorship part of the population here. Today I'll ask it again,
       | and I hope somebody will respond in a useful way:
       | 
       | QUESTION:
       | 
       | I write software for parallel processors at a hardware/software
       | company you've heard of. I am located in California but many of
       | my coworkers are located in China (roughly half the team).
       | 
       | We are directly affected by the American government's severe new
       | CPU/GPU export restrictions.
       | 
       | It seems to me that America is preparing for a period of cold
       | war, or worse.
       | 
       | It's time to start thinking about contributing to the American
       | war effort by writing high-performance military computing
       | systems.
       | 
       | For example, SIMD particle filters for hypersonic weapons, or
       | low-latency convolutional neural networks for battlefield
       | devices.
       | 
       | So, Hacker News: What company is the best place to do this work?
       | What team?
       | 
       | Does anyone here already work in this field?
        
         | phdelightful wrote:
         | If you can tolerate a .gov email address, there are high-
         | performance computing, edge computing, and AI groups at DOE
         | labs. My impression is that they're always starved for talent
         | in these areas due to stiff competition from industry and
         | lifestyle restrictions that come with a security clearance
         | (being a US citizen, reduced international travel, no drugs
         | other than alcohol and nicotine, your work may require on-
         | site). Defense labs are probably similar.
        
       | abeyer wrote:
       | A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
        
       | capitalsigma wrote:
       | Not super clear to me how useful computer vision algorithms are
       | to the military. The important thing in the private sector is
       | replacing (say) the lab tech who would otherwise be paid minimum
       | wage to look through your data. If you have plenty of low skill
       | labor available, what advantage do you get?
        
         | _carbyau_ wrote:
         | Outright speed, speed of scalability.
         | 
         | If you can submit what you want and have it within moments, it
         | beats a fancy typing pool. That kind of speed alone lets you
         | have a highly trained someone retry different variations and
         | filter more on quality of result.
         | 
         | Scalability. If you need to do it ten times faster. More
         | hardware = done. More people _could_ make it done too but
         | training etc is required.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | thoweiru3o43 wrote:
       | Half the kids in US grad-schools are Chinese. The other half are
       | Indian. Neither are particularly fond of the racial-religious
       | notions of 'US hegemony'.
       | 
       | Good luck keeping your 'supremacy'.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | RivieraKid wrote:
         | I want to live in a world where liberal democracies have the
         | most power over the world. The power of China, Russia, Iran or
         | North Korea should be minimized.
        
       | pshc wrote:
       | Must funnel ever increasing resources into wasteful and
       | destructive conflict.
       | 
       | How about using AI to figure out how to cooperate at scale?
        
         | remarkEon wrote:
         | Determining ways to win a destructive conflict is a mechanism
         | to signal willingness to cooperate, and the value of that
         | cooperation (averting the war in the first place). Pretending
         | they're mutually exclusive is wrong.
        
           | pshc wrote:
           | One problem with human governance is we can't seem to figure
           | out how to coordinate without burning excessive amounts of
           | energy signalling status and power at each other. What if we
           | could do better?
        
             | remarkEon wrote:
             | What exactly do you imagine as "doing better", here?
        
         | cellis wrote:
         | If you never lift weights, and everyone else around you does,
         | don't be surprised when the "cooperation" tilts in their favor.
         | Such is the nature of man.
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | Some of this could be interpreted as satire. For example, it's
       | not necessary to improve AI capabilities in order to generate
       | believeable propaganda - nation-states have been doing that ever
       | since the printed press was invented, and before. It certainly
       | reached a fever pitch in the 20th century, with radio,
       | television, print and internet media all being the scene of
       | numerous pitched propaganda battles, with social media being
       | (perhaps) the dominant information-warfare battleground of the
       | 21st century.
       | 
       | As far as the Ukraine drone war, that's not really different from
       | the Afghan drone war, the main difference being the relative lack
       | of energy infrastructure or heavy armor to attack in Afghanistan.
       | Whatever one can say about Russia vs NATO-backed Ukraine, or the
       | USA vs Afghanistan, neither serves much purpose for making
       | predictions about an 'all-out war' between China and the United
       | States.
       | 
       | One glaring omission is the failure to recognize that China is a
       | nuclear power (as its ally North Korea), and it's not hard to
       | imagine a serious naval conflict between the USA and China going
       | nuclear - what better way to eliminate an offshore aircraft
       | carrier battle group, for example? This article mentions nuclear
       | once (in a 1942 context) and barely discusses what a real naval
       | conflict would look like, other than to claim that 'autonomous
       | adaptive drone swarms' would be harder targets to than aircraft
       | carriers. That's a science fiction story line from, say, the Iain
       | M. Banks Culture novels, not a realistic scenario for naval
       | warfare (and what about submarines?).
       | 
       | All in all this reads like a bit of hyperventilation, or maybe a
       | sales pitch put together by the AI warfare divisions of Lockheed
       | and Northrup. It also ignores the rationale for 'having a human
       | in the loop', but then maybe the author hasn't seen the 1980s
       | movie War Games?
        
         | jasmer wrote:
         | This is relevant document.
         | 
         | The ability to automate and make 'good quality' content is
         | decisive in the information space. The world is greatly moved
         | by photos and video of horrible things, and if that can be
         | faked with high fidelity it will make a huge difference. People
         | won't have time for the truth - the 'video' of 'whatever' will
         | make it's impact.
         | 
         | The drone war in Ukraine is completely different from that in
         | Afghanistan. The Baryaktar drones are almost useless, have an
         | average lifespan of just a few weeks. They're almost all
         | destroyed and don't play an important role. FYI many of the
         | Baryaktar videos we saw over the months were released over
         | time, as the units were mostly destroyed. Russia has no
         | equivalent. Small drones are used for recon, target
         | acquisition, dropping small munitions, which is nothing like
         | Afghanistan. And the scale of it as well. We're seeing the firs
         | 'small drone war at scale'.
         | 
         | I suggest China, being China, will try it at real scale, and
         | during the invasion of Taiwan I expect to see swarms of
         | thousands of drones on the offence - overwhelming numbers.
         | 
         | Everyone is aware that 'nuclear weapons exist' and also that AI
         | works to varying degrees of autonomy.
        
         | Gatsky wrote:
         | I doubt China would just blow up a bunch of American aircraft
         | carriers with a nuclear weapon, unless they were under
         | existential threat. China would be severely disadvantaged in a
         | nuclear conflict I would have thought, and would try not to go
         | there under any circumstances. North Korea even moreso. As
         | such, non-nuclear approaches remain relevant.
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | The AI war will be won by the faction having the best datasets,
       | and China has no limits when it comes to collecting data.
       | 
       | The Chinese government is all-knowing and all-seeing. They are
       | also above the law and can do whatever they want.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | > China has no limits when it comes to collecting data
         | 
         | This is an overgeneralization when it comes to the sources and
         | types of data used in a battlefield, to map infrastructure, and
         | so forth.
         | 
         | While the Great Firewall and social monitoring do collect much
         | data on the population, thereby decreasing non-state internal
         | intelligence gathering and capability for spying, there is a
         | difference between tactical data from a hot front and
         | identification of spies.
        
       | gavin_gee wrote:
       | The prudent thing is to invest in the technology even if china
       | isnt.
        
       | jasonshen wrote:
       | As a naturalized US citizen who was born in China but intends to
       | raise a family as full-bore Americans, it's hard for me to assess
       | the China threat.
       | 
       | I believe China very much wants to assert it's influence in the
       | Asia Pacific + MENA region, but I just don't it trying to conquer
       | the United States directly. It's never really had a history of
       | imperialism like the West has (excluding the Mongol empire that
       | collapsed almost immediately).
       | 
       | That said, a country doesn't need to directly conquer another to
       | be a threat. Still, it's hard to know how serious the threat
       | really is--the post is compelling but also assumes as a forgone
       | conclusion that China has aggressor ambitions.
        
         | bsder wrote:
         | The longer Xi Jingping stays in power the less I worry about
         | China on the international stage.
         | 
         | The subleaders will need to do increasingly extreme things in
         | order to show results to the Supreme Leader. That's starting to
         | play out--the Apple shakedown, Chinese police stations in
         | foreign countries, etc. Those things have _finally_ gotten the
         | Western powers to realize that China is a genuine enemy, and
         | they are starting to retaliate.
         | 
         | In addition, now that Russia has basically been dismantled, the
         | defense system in America needs a new boogeyman.
         | Congratulations, China, you're on deck.
        
           | thoweiru3o43 wrote:
           | > Russia has basically been dismantled
           | 
           | Western press proving day-in day-out how primitive Pravda
           | was.
        
             | rdevsrex wrote:
             | Oh my god that's so true. It's like they've invented hire
             | order lying.
        
           | RivieraKid wrote:
           | Russia hasn't been dismantled unfortunately. There's a good
           | chance they end up with more territory.
        
             | jasmer wrote:
             | Russia is definitely taken apart. They may be able to hold
             | that bit of territory with suicidal bodies in trenches, but
             | they are in really bad shape.
             | 
             | They are down to ancient weapons, ancient tanks, their Navy
             | almost entirely defunct.
             | 
             | Most of their 'fast air' remains.
             | 
             | And they are going to have a very difficult time rebuilding
             | with sanctions, and the severe economic problems with
             | talent and resources.
             | 
             | They could 'come back' over a decade but I suggest Europe
             | is becoming ready for that, and without the offer on the
             | table of a nice, juicy, undefended territory, neither Putin
             | nor his successors will have much luck.
             | 
             | It's the ambiguity that's the problem.
        
             | bsder wrote:
             | Which will simply become controlled by China--if Russia can
             | even hold onto the territory (this winter will be telling).
             | 
             | Russia is now effectively a pending Chinese vassal state
             | caused by their coming rebuild. No one else is going to
             | support them, and Russia has wiped out a big chunk of their
             | workforce--both young labor as well as older brainpower.
             | So, Russia will have to turn to China for both labor and
             | brainpower at the cost of sovereignty.
             | 
             | The only thing that would prevent Russia from becoming a
             | Chinese vassal is if they somehow wind up with a leader
             | smart enough to pair up with India.
        
         | RivieraKid wrote:
         | The threat is increasing influence across the world.
        
         | cercatrova wrote:
         | I wonder how the world would be different had Zheng He sailed
         | his junks east rather than west.
        
         | caligarn wrote:
         | China was never an imperial force like European colonists, but
         | it always saw itself as the "Middle Kingdom" and the most
         | important civilization on earth. It may be a different paradigm
         | but the right to power or hegemony is still embedded in the
         | culture and ethos.
        
           | jasmer wrote:
           | It was - and still wishes to be 'Imperial' in it's direct
           | sphere of influence, which is to say, most of E and S/E Asia.
           | 
           | China is not ever going to invade the USA of course.
        
           | woooooo wrote:
           | It's actually a healthy and non-threatening paradigm?
           | 
           | If they think they're the best and have no reason to expand
           | because of that, the only threat is to our egos.
        
             | frognumber wrote:
             | Tribute. China always expected tribute from its neighbors.
             | 
             | The benefits in return for tribute were often greater than
             | the tribute, but it did show a high level of domination of
             | its neighbors for most of its history.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | nyolfen wrote:
             | maybe you should tell that to the tibetans, uyghurs,
             | taiwanese, etc.
        
         | china_lol_throw wrote:
        
         | XorNot wrote:
         | What do you think imperialism is other then "exert influence"?
        
           | anshumankmr wrote:
           | Also,China has invaded India and claims many Indian states as
           | its own.
           | 
           | Plus it invaded Vietnam (and lost)
        
           | jjtheblunt wrote:
           | Extract taxes, i.e., the Roman version?
        
         | random314 wrote:
         | Considering American aggression in Iraq and Latin America,
         | China is a dove. However, it is true that China has been
         | aggressively expanding borders into half of its neighboring
         | countries. They are also extremely internally aggressive
         | committing genocide against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun gong etc.
         | 
         | A counter balance to the American threat is not a bad thing.
        
         | nyokodo wrote:
         | > It's never really had a history of imperialism like the West
         | has
         | 
         | Vietnam, Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang might beg to differ and
         | that's before considering that the leader of China was
         | literally an emperor up until recently. However, if by
         | "imperialism" you mean across oceans and hemispheres then point
         | taken but that isn't really a virtue as China has never had a
         | navy capable of doing so. It still doesn't although it sorely
         | wants to.
         | 
         | > the post... assumes as a forgone conclusion that China has
         | aggressor ambitions.
         | 
         | With the advent of wolf warrior diplomacy, the aggressive and
         | illegal construction of military bases in disputed waters all
         | over the South China Sea, the interference in US elections, the
         | rampant IP theft along with constant attempts to steal military
         | secrets, along with threats of total war whenever the US
         | sneezes in the direction of Taiwan... what would you think?
        
           | moris_borris wrote:
           | > wolf warrior diplomacy, the aggressive and illegal
           | construction of military bases in disputed waters all over
           | the South China Sea, the interference in US elections, the
           | rampant IP theft along with constant attempts to steal
           | military secrets, along with threats of total war whenever
           | the US sneezes in the direction of Taiwan
           | 
           | Dyed in the wool American here. All of these pale in
           | comparison to the history of our my nation, which has been at
           | war with much of the world for most of its existence. Rampant
           | IP theft is nothing compared to the bombing of civilian
           | infrastructure in Iraq (among other countries in the Middle
           | East) during the 1990s and 2000s, the clusterfuck of
           | atrocities that was the Vietnam War, to say nothing of our
           | extensive support for dictators in Latin America throughout
           | the 20th century. When it comes to interfering with elections
           | (and indeed the results of them), we put China to shame. I
           | love my country, but I can't pretend that our military
           | industrial complex has been anything but a threat to
           | countless other nations and will certainly continue to do so.
        
             | ilaksh wrote:
             | Good points. But that doesn't mean China won't copy this.
             | Because the model for global power has always been ruthless
             | force. One empire after another.
        
             | rdevsrex wrote:
             | Well said, I was thinking the exact same thing. This guy
             | acts like this is a foregone conclusion that we must have
             | war. It's a choice to stand back or to stand up.
             | 
             | And given the aforementioned disparities, we should really
             | consider if giving China it's space in a multi polar world
             | is more in our best interest than going to war to keep the
             | hegemony alive.
        
             | stephen_g wrote:
             | Not to mention that IP theft in the late 18th into the 19th
             | century was basically the bedrock upon which the US's
             | industrial and economic systems were built...
        
               | mc32 wrote:
               | The Berne and Paris conventions didn't come to be till
               | the late 1800s --which both the US and China are
               | signatories of.
        
       | r3muxd wrote:
       | With all due respect, has the author ever watched _WarGames
       | (1983)_?
        
       | poopboob wrote:
       | Let's see
       | 
       | Alex is the CEO of Scale
       | 
       | Scale is a DOD Contractor
       | 
       | Scale is an AI company
       | 
       | Alex suggests DOD allocate funds for AI
       | 
       | Here's some news from someone who has seen the AI leaderboard
       | game closely and led teams that won some
       | 
       | Leaderboards like COCO that Alex cites are not a good indicator.
       | They are flooded incremental performance improvements that hardly
       | translate to any real world application
        
         | greatpostman wrote:
         | Either he's trying to be manipulative by using that data, or he
         | doesn't understand "ai"
        
         | ethbr0 wrote:
         | >> (from TFA) _In the past 5 years, the United States has still
         | not started, let alone operationalized, a major AI capability
         | that could disrupt our current warfighter._
         | 
         | When he misses or conveniently ignores the Skyborg UCAV program
         | from the Air Force [0], I also question the author's knowledge
         | of the current state of military programs.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyborg
        
       | phdelightful wrote:
       | Can the US taxpayer tolerate (financially, politically) what it
       | will take to get the best and brightest to do AI work for .gov
       | and .mil instead of adtech? All you have to do is look at defense
       | lab salaries to see there is going to be a problem keeping talent
       | around. Some people are certainly willing to take a pay cut to
       | work on national defense, but probably not enough. Perhaps
       | especially not the kind of person who went into adtech in the
       | first place.
        
         | jasmer wrote:
         | Paycheques are very hard to walk away from but a lot of very
         | bright minds will go into defence right out of school and never
         | look back.
        
         | remarkEon wrote:
         | The way to short circuit this is to make certain classes of
         | adtech de facto (maybe even de jure) illegal.
        
         | jonas21 wrote:
         | This isn't going to happen by recruiting people to work for
         | government labs. It'll happen by contracting the work out to
         | companies that are already doing top AI research (many of which
         | also work in adtech) and through grand challenges that
         | incentivize research teams and startups to make new
         | breakthroughs.
         | 
         | Google, for example, would have gladly accepted Project Maven
         | contracts if its own employees hadn't protested. If China does
         | supersede the U.S. militarily, that may end up looking naive in
         | retrospect.
        
           | phdelightful wrote:
           | I basically agree. I don't think the political mechanisms
           | exist in the short-to-intermediate term to get salaries in
           | government labs high enough. As you point out, the extent to
           | which "civilians" will be willing to participate in these
           | lines of work is an open question (said without judgement,
           | just as an observation). Presumably folks who have opted-in
           | to work at defense contractors will be more willing, but do
           | they have the ability to attract a sufficient amount of
           | talent in this area?
        
           | Sebguer wrote:
           | Ah, yes, the solution is to cede more of the country to
           | corporations!
        
             | phdelightful wrote:
             | People who feel strongly that current procurement
             | strategies are the wrong way to go about things should
             | devote as much toil and treasure as they can to seeing
             | their preferred solution materialize. In the mean time, I
             | hope they will allow others to work within our existing
             | system to keep our adversaries from replacing the US with
             | something much worse for the entire world.
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | With government salary bands what they are, there is
             | nothing they really can do.
        
       | madmax96 wrote:
       | Is it wise to compare spending within defense budgets between
       | these countries? Much AI research in the US is conducted by
       | private firms. How does the current defense budget compare to
       | historical defense budgets, such as during the early days of the
       | digital computer in the Cold War?
       | 
       | On a related note: yes, Chinese researchers have models that
       | perform certain tasks well. But are those models useful in the
       | contexts the author mentions?
       | 
       | To be sure, I don't disagree that AI research needs funded. I'm
       | just genuinely curious about these points.
        
       | greatpostman wrote:
       | I'm still confused by ai fear mongering. All the best models and
       | advances come from the USA. Chinese research, while high in
       | volume, never advances state of the art aside from incremental
       | improvement.
       | 
       | Incoming downvotes, but the fact remains most advanced have
       | basically come from google, Fb and openai
        
         | ETHisso2017 wrote:
         | Simple, Scale AI is likely fishing for federal contracts now
         | that its traditional enterprise customer set is throttling back
         | on spending
        
           | species9606 wrote:
           | Exactly this. The "AI race" is yet another nuclear arms race,
           | where the American public is terrified into believing in some
           | sort of (nonexistent) capabilities gap, and the only way to
           | avoid utter defeat is to funnel billions, eventually
           | trillions, of dollars to the right companies.
        
         | willbudd wrote:
         | That's simply not true. There are numerous problem domains in
         | AI where Chinese research groups are advancing the SOTA, or at
         | least are well-presented at the forefront. Your comment reads
         | like little more than casual racism to me.
        
           | airgapstopgap wrote:
        
           | jackblemming wrote:
           | Such as?
        
           | greatpostman wrote:
           | No I read the academic research all the time. Most state of
           | the art papers take an existing method and incrementally
           | change the model to get a better result. They aren't real
           | advances. Anyone that actually publishes and works in the
           | field knows this. Basically all major advances have come from
           | Fb/google
        
         | Gatsky wrote:
         | Although this seems true at first glance, it is likely that
         | state sponsored cutting edge Chinese AI research would not be
         | disseminated publicly. China does also have certain
         | 'advantages' in the ethics and scale of training data
         | collection.
        
       | lsy wrote:
       | This is a very urgent-sounding article about China's supposed AI
       | superpowers and how they will dominate the battlefield,
       | coincidentally written by the head of an American "AI" company
       | who would likely personally benefit from shifting $150B into AI
       | research, as suggested. Complete with AI-industry standard claims
       | about technology that is "less than 10 years away", and sci-fi
       | about "autonomous, adaptive drone swarms".
       | 
       | War is _so_ much more complicated than the author wants readers
       | to think. Raw technological dominance does not assure victory, as
       | the US found after 20 years in Afghanistan. AI, for all its
       | impressive feats, continues to operate without flexibility or
       | common sense, and foundational concepts like geography or
       | economic influence remain the most important contributors to
       | success in the military sphere.
       | 
       | Even if one takes the continuance of the DoD's aims as an
       | unalloyed good, what areas of its budget would go unserved with
       | 25% redirected to AI research? How do those cuts or
       | reprioritizations affect US military capability? I don't suspect
       | the author has thought about this very much, and yet he feels
       | qualified to write yet another AI/China scare article, which more
       | and more seem designed to terrify politicians who determine
       | funding rather than to convince military experts.
        
         | 300bps wrote:
         | To your point, I literally laughed out loud at this in the
         | article:
         | 
         |  _Based on the pace of progress with AI technology today, I
         | believe this is less than 10 years away._
         | 
         | How does anyone write things like this and expect to be taken
         | seriously with the track record of AI regarding real world
         | things like autonomous driving?
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | superb-owl wrote:
       | I've been skeptical of AI posing an existential risk.
       | 
       | This article may have changed my mind.
        
       | pellucide wrote:
       | Summary: China bad, because.... AI
        
       | ETHisso2017 wrote:
       | In 2021, Alex Wang of Scale (the author of the linked article)
       | uncritically quoted the following from Eric Schmidt:
       | 
       | "Eric states that the global growth of AI technology is a
       | national security threat for the United States. In March, we
       | believed we were ahead of China's technological development in
       | the AI sector, but they quickly showed us that we were wrong. By
       | June, they'd demonstrated a model capable of producing human-like
       | text that was comparable to OpenAI's GPT-3 model in quality."
       | 
       | https://scale.com/blog/Eric-Schmidt-Geopolitics-TransformX-S...
       | 
       | As such, it's important to note that the author views the entire
       | Chinese AI industry as a threat to the United States, and may
       | believe that the growth of AI anywhere in the rest of the world
       | is a threat to the United States.
        
         | remarkEon wrote:
         | Is there a reason that I should think of Wang as uniquely
         | qualified to comment on this space? He runs an AI startup,
         | seems knowledgeable about AI in general, but what does he know
         | about war?
        
           | bloodyplonker22 wrote:
           | Fair question, but I don't think one needs to be very skilled
           | in the arts of war and military tactics to foresee that AI
           | will be important in the future of war. I don't think it's
           | worth throwing our dear Wang's blog out the window for this.
           | The points he makes about AI's involvement in the future of
           | war are very broad and high level. For example, he compares
           | the amount of money that each country is spending on AI in
           | the military and concludes that the US is lagging. It would
           | be interesting if we had someone, like Palmer Luckey, who is
           | actually involved in military AI speak in more detail about
           | it.
        
             | remarkEon wrote:
             | Right, they are high level points, which is why I am having
             | a hard time finding something specific to critique or even
             | disagree with.
             | 
             | For example, when I think of the question of "how will AI
             | be used" the obvious answer, which Wang more or less
             | addresses, is targeting systems. Basically, we're just
             | going to automate all of that and instead of a bunch of
             | captains in the S2 shop cooking up target packets and
             | deciding which one makes the most sense, the AI just does
             | all of this for us.
             | 
             | But what does this actually _mean_? Can we obsolete some
             | /most/all of the S2 shop and replace it with a container of
             | servers stacked with GPUs to do imagine processing? Take
             | that manpower and add another infantry platoon? A drone
             | operations platoon?
        
         | qualudeheart wrote:
         | A great theoretician would pose the question this way. Can
         | what's playing the government make it to level two?
        
       | qualudeheart wrote:
       | AI is strong enough to decide who wins the economic fight.
       | Prediction: 10% gdp growth year over year as we approahc general
       | ai.
       | 
       | The AI Economy will be a new reality. It may not be a good
       | reality. Will it be your reality?
        
       | largbae wrote:
       | I am definitely afraid of mass data collection and drones, both
       | for warfare and law enforcement. They lower the cost of coercing
       | and if need be killing, both emotionally and financially.
       | 
       | AI will lower this cost further, and enable fewer and fewer
       | powerful people to threaten or control the rest.
       | 
       | The Chinese government has so far turned much of its technology
       | inward toward the control of its own people, who seem either OK
       | with it or unable to resist. Perhaps they are just early
       | adopters, and one by one all governments will follow their
       | example, first trusting their own judgment more than the will of
       | their constituents, and then using technology to keep it that
       | way.
       | 
       | We may not need a world war 3, or even an external adversary to
       | lose this race. How about we spend more time on defensive
       | technologies for individuals and laws protecting their use?
        
         | rdevsrex wrote:
         | I've seen a number of various voices speaking up about the
         | possibility of a turn key totalitarian state in the US. Where
         | everything is in place and waiting for some just to turn it on.
         | That is the worst case scenario here.
         | 
         | That said obviously we can resist, but it is worrying.
        
       | somenameforme wrote:
       | This article seemingly handwaves away the single most important
       | factor in modern war between major powers: nukes. If two major
       | powers go to war, and it's a real war in the sense of one trying
       | to directly conquer the other's land then that's going to, near
       | immediately, escalate to mutual nuclear annihilation. AI doesn't
       | change this basic and now decades old formula in any way, shape,
       | or fashion.
       | 
       | I'd also add that the article fails to mention that the wargames
       | we keep losing are not outright nation vs nation war, but instead
       | over things like Taiwan. We're trying to win a war at a location
       | 10,000 miles away against a country 100 miles away. Overextension
       | is at the heart of the decline of all great Empires.
        
       | bee_rider wrote:
       | I dunno. I mean, yeah technology will be used in war, and
       | counties ahead in technology will usually be able to design
       | better weapons. But like:
       | 
       | > Technologies including drones, AI-based targeting and imagery
       | intelligence, and Javelin missiles have allowed for a shocking
       | defense of Ukraine against Russia
       | 
       | What is "AI-based targeting and imagery intelligence," is it
       | being used in Ukraine, and why is it sandwiched between two
       | media-darling weapon systems? This kinda reduces my faith in the
       | honestly of the author here. Does anyone know about weapons
       | development, is he pulling a fast one?
        
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