[HN Gopher] 60 Nations agree to regulate AI in the military befo...
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       60 Nations agree to regulate AI in the military before it destroys
       the world
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2023-02-17 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | mrguyorama wrote:
       | FYI, the US, or at least the navy, has grappled with letting a
       | computer shoot at things since the 50s, when they first
       | computerized target tasking and prioritization and fleet
       | networking. It was explicitly discussed that older navy folk were
       | wary of letting the machines make decisions, so they purposely
       | designed it in a way that a human was the one giving firing
       | permission.
       | 
       | By the 80s however, we were willing to let at least one system
       | operate entirely autonomously, the Phalanx CIWS, and that
       | decision has already lead to a few friendly fire incidents
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS#Incidents
       | 
       | The US military already has experience allowing computers to make
       | death happen, and Raytheon is likely already testing an "AI pulls
       | the trigger with no intervention" system right now. If we are
       | unwilling to implement laws against that right now, then it will
       | 100% happen.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | When I think war AI, I am thinking 3 levels: the global
       | coordinating AI on a battle field, the AIs of a swarm of "killer
       | robots"/weapons (should not work with good EM jamming), the
       | embedded AI in each "killer robot"/weapon with a local non-
       | jammable tactical "vision" (should not be very interesting due to
       | the very limited "size" of an "embeddable" AI).
       | 
       | I am a dota2 player, and I very well remember E.Musk openAI: a
       | team of 5 independent AIs with each a different set of skills
       | based on the hero... and they had to slow them down and make them
       | inaccurate...
       | 
       | In the end, I cannot see clearly where an AI would pertinently
       | fit in a battle. Stategic assistance?
        
         | sorokod wrote:
         | Each of the AIs you mentioned may have a dedicated counter AI
         | fielded by the opponent.
        
         | revolvingocelot wrote:
         | What matters is an AI's ability to do things that human
         | combatants cannot, and that which human opponents cannot
         | effectively counter.
         | 
         | As you refer to videogame AI, think back to the Berkeley
         | Overmind, a Starcraft 1 Zerg AI that beat seasoned humans by
         | the simple expedient of being able to shuffle around mutalisks
         | [0] in such a way that no human micromanagement could
         | efficiently kill any. The only realistic way to defeat the
         | Berkeley Overmind, as I recall the decade-old coverage, was to
         | attack the AI's base before it could build the tech necessary
         | to spawn mutalisks.
         | 
         | [0] Mutalisks are a Zerg air unit whose attack bounces from
         | enemy to enemy. Like all Zerg units, it regenerates health
         | gradually, so the AI's chief tactic of moving even slightly
         | damaged units to the back of the battlegroup allowed surprising
         | compounding benefits.
        
         | credit_guy wrote:
         | > I cannot see clearly where an AI would pertinently fit in a
         | battle
         | 
         | Here's a scenario: one F-35 together with about two dozen loyal
         | wingman drones [1]. The drones stay within line of sight of the
         | F-35, so they are immune to electronic warfare of the kind that
         | lead to the capture of a US drone by Iran in 2011 [2]. The F-35
         | pilot assigns the drones high-level missions, like take care of
         | the incoming bogeys in the north-east sector. The drones then
         | use AI to coordinate their actions in an optimal way and carry
         | out the mission. Some of the drones are lost. No biggie.
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-28_Ghost_Bat
         | 
         | [2]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-17 23:01 UTC)