10 ms·

If we assume the wars of the future to be fought by AI-driven warmachines, can we abstract the matter further and have virtual wars? Our AI versus your AI fight

by vbo 10y ago

If we assume the wars of the future to be fought by AI-driven warmachines, can we abstract the matter further and have virtual wars? Our AI versus your AI fighting on computational resources provided by, erm, Switzerland. Nobody gets hurt and no money is spent building and destroying warplanes. Everybody wins. And have a prize pot, so actual invasion of territory is not necessary. Bulletproof solution, may I say. What do you mean it won't work?

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Curiously, that happens already. Simulations are run on battles before they are fought until a winning tactic is found.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Now if only we could get the losing party to accept the outcome of their simulations too and to capitulate. In practice, the losing party as often as not will try to inflict as much damage on the victor as they can, and more often than not what starts as a battle ends up being a long term occupation and that's when all simulations seem to break down. Battles are 'easy', long term planning is not.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Actually it's more that the loser has to genuinely believe the result of the outcome. And amongst a population, the demographic of rebellious young adults tends not to accept outcomes like that...but of course that also becomes part of the calculus: can you accept expected losses of occupation forces?
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Nobody that loses a virtual war is going to give up and let the other side take what they want without a very violent fight.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  But it worked on Star Trek!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- teraformer 10y ago
  For this to work, every aspect of the simulation would have to match up with real world circumstances. ...which would mean no secrets. ...or weapons that, when used, obviate many degrees of secrecy, like nuclear weapons.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Assuming the results are pretty accurate about the outcome, why not? You can either surrender now and not have any civilians killed, or suffer the following casualties and still lose. Heck it might even prevent war if the simulation says that both sides will suffer too high casualties to make it worth it.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Even when a military of outrageously greater power wins, people will still fight, even if they know they are fighting to the death and couldn't make a dent in the fighting strength of the superior occupying forces. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq
    - sevenless 10y ago
      I'm not sure the Iraqi resistance against the US was in that hopeless a position. They were outgunned conventionally, but that didn't matter in a guerilla war against a foreign occupier.
      - talmand 10y ago
        For a guerilla war to be successful, the foreign occupier has to lose the will to win. Such resistance is hopeless in general terms of warfare, to be won it has to be considered as much a political war as it is a conventional one.
sevenless 10y ago
But nobody has any skin in the game that way. The Star Trek version was to have citizens of both sides executed to match simulated casualty numbers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
- vbo 10y ago
  To take matters even further and also somewhat address skin in the game, how about we do away with AI virtual warfare, since it too implies taxpayer money being used for eventually futile endeavours and simply organise a war-chess games between the leaders of the countries. President Trump, your move.
  - boxy310 10y ago
    The prize purse and "simulated" aspect make me wonder how much the rise of football and the World Cup has sublimated democratic nations' drive for warfare as a path to national pride. The same argument also applies for the Olympics.
    - vbo 10y ago
      Interesting question. If we assume competitive sports to function in relation to testosterone or other hormonal drives when played or watched, an argument could be made that if the competitive hormonal 'itch' of men is scratched through sports, the desire to compete in war is lessened in the population, which in turn may affect politics. Purely speculative comment.
seren 10y ago
This is a part of the plot of Ian M. Banks 'Surface Detail' (2010). Two parties agrees to wage a war in virtual worlds to decide if virtual hells should be allowed or banned. Unsurprisingly, the losing party tries to move the war in the real world to reverse the losing trend.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Well it was a little more complicated than that. And also that whole book was amazing.
  - moheeb 10y ago
    I'm not sure if 'Surface Detail' is a book or a movie, but I assumed there was more to it than a two sentence description.
adrianN 10y ago
The so-called "cyber war" will be a very important component of any future war between nation states. Taking over the enemies SCADA systems, power grid, net infrastructure etc. can do massive economic damage with few casualties. I don't think we'll ever see a civilized form of war where no real harm is done, because abiding by the rules of such a war is not a game-theoretic equilibrium. If a party builds a real army in addition to the simulated army and uses it, it will win the war.
- sevenless 10y ago
  We have a Geneva Convention, and international norms against nuclear weapons, which are also pretty good deterrents themselves (we hope). Just like nuclear powers sometimes wage limited conventional wars, it's possible to imagine a set of international laws and norms where disputes would be resolved by virtual conflicts without escalation to armed force. Advances in robotic war machines could make them so fearsome they deterred real-world armed conflict in favor of virtual conflict. (Of course, that's what they said about the machine gun before WW1)
  - talmand 10y ago
    The Geneva Convention only works if both sides abide by it. Such deterrents only work because we allow them to work. Once one side decides the consequences of going against the norm is acceptable, or can be avoided altogether, then the rules no longer apply.
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  What makes you think that disabling infrastructural targets will result in fewer casualties? Power for heating, cooling and hospitals. Transit systems for food distribution. Computers for synchronising all of the above. How many casualties do you think would result from shutting down infrastructure in NYC in mid winter? Even evacuation causes casualties. I was reading an assessment of the Fukushima evacuation that suggested fewer casualties would have resulted from just staying there.
  - 10y ago
prodmerc 10y ago
"We lost" "Well, they're not taking [whatever the goal was] without a real fight!" It will then be AI/humans vs AI/humans cause one side will have to bear (real) heavy losses...
saiya-jin 10y ago
I think you're missing a big reason why wars are waged - massive cash flows stemming from delivering actual destruction and subsequent rebuilding. war is a dirty business, but business it is, and what a juicy one. simpler people hate banks/bankers, yet I haven't heard about any protesters occupying Lockheed, BAE or similar folks and wishing them jail. last thing these powerful corporations want is to change the game that works so well for them now.
- sevenless 10y ago
  This is a conspiracy theory, as while weapons manufacturers profit from war, they would profit any way governments bought, maintained or upgraded weapons. There is also no evidence that BAE or GE go out of their way to cause wars. Indeed, they would rather sell weapons to all sides. Arms races are certain profit, wars bring uncertainty, and cut off other massive cash flows (like the Iran oil embargo)
  - boxy310 10y ago
    Pretty sure massive amounts of German arms manufacturers went out of business after both WWI and WWII. If the country is utterly defeated, it doesn't bode well for shareholders if the company is dismantled as part of peace talks, or if the government backing its payments shrivels up into nothing.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    imagine 50 years of no war, civil uprisings, no global enemy or power hungry empire, warmongering dictator etc. who would need latest war tech in massive numbers? war is a seed planted for long term future. look at middle east - I guarantee you 100 years from now on, this will still be a bad place to be. who will profit from it? all that arm all sides. when last few US wars were declared, for whatever funky official reasons, do you really believe that only US president and very few true and just in government were involved in deciding if, when, how, what tech will be used etc? in this I trust Russia much more - epicenter of power is pretty clear there. I don't believe in some Illuminati governing everything, nor do I believe that people with real power are not corrupted to their rotten core, owning favors left and right, their missteps are overlooked and their places +-secured etc. you don't get too high in politics (or army for that matter which becomes politics from certain level) as independent and just. just my gut feeling and common sense. but boy would i be glad to be wrong!
mdpopescu 10y ago
Or you could have the warring nations fight in an Eve Online Alliance Tournament :)
jdmichal 10y ago
The commitment and potential loss of resources while waging war is actually a valuable input to the system. If all war was virtual, then why not continuously wage war with everyone weaker than yourself all the time? Why would the strongest not virtually-subjugate every other nation? In the real world, resources aren't unlimited and losses are cumulative. So consideration must be made as to when it's worth committing to a war.
Domenic_S 10y ago
Original Star Trek did it! In this episode, the crew of the USS Enterprise visits a planet whose people fight a computer-simulated war against a neighboring planet. Although the war is fought via computer simulation, the citizens of each planet have to submit to real executions inside "disintegration booths" to meet the casualty counts of the simulated attacks. The crew of the Enterprise is caught in the middle and are told to submit themselves voluntarily for execution after being "killed" in an "enemy attack". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
- coldcode 10y ago
  Which also contains one of the best Spock lines ever: "Sir, there is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder" - neck pinch, boom.
marcosdumay 10y ago
That's not much different from how things work since the beginning of the nuclear era. Both sides compare their strength, and the weaker side often capitulates to avoid a real war. (It was less common on the past, but it always happened to some extent.) Of course, it does not always work.
spitfire 10y ago
Hollywood is way ahead of you. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
btbuildem 10y ago
You might find this an enjoyable read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)
pessimizer 10y ago
Wars of the future will be fought by people strapping bombs to themselves, obtaining the most destructive guns they can find and all the ammo that they can carry, and attacking civilian areas. 100 million dollar AI killing machines are mainly ways to funnel state money to the connected.

by vbo 10y ago

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Curiously, that happens already. Simulations are run on battles before they are fought until a winning tactic is found.

jacquesm 10y ago
Now if only we could get the losing party to accept the outcome of their simulations too and to capitulate. In practice, the losing party as often as not will try to inflict as much damage on the victor as they can, and more often than not what starts as a battle ends up being a long term occupation and that's when all simulations seem to break down. Battles are 'easy', long term planning is not.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Actually it's more that the loser has to genuinely believe the result of the outcome. And amongst a population, the demographic of rebellious young adults tends not to accept outcomes like that...but of course that also becomes part of the calculus: can you accept expected losses of occupation forces?

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Nobody that loses a virtual war is going to give up and let the other side take what they want without a very violent fight.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
But it worked on Star Trek!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
teraformer 10y ago
For this to work, every aspect of the simulation would have to match up with real world circumstances. ...which would mean no secrets. ...or weapons that, when used, obviate many degrees of secrecy, like nuclear weapons.
tomjen3 10y ago
Assuming the results are pretty accurate about the outcome, why not? You can either surrender now and not have any civilians killed, or suffer the following casualties and still lose. Heck it might even prevent war if the simulation says that both sides will suffer too high casualties to make it worth it.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Even when a military of outrageously greater power wins, people will still fight, even if they know they are fighting to the death and couldn't make a dent in the fighting strength of the superior occupying forces. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq
  - sevenless 10y ago
    I'm not sure the Iraqi resistance against the US was in that hopeless a position. They were outgunned conventionally, but that didn't matter in a guerilla war against a foreign occupier.
    - talmand 10y ago
      For a guerilla war to be successful, the foreign occupier has to lose the will to win. Such resistance is hopeless in general terms of warfare, to be won it has to be considered as much a political war as it is a conventional one.

sevenless 10y ago

But nobody has any skin in the game that way. The Star Trek version was to have citizens of both sides executed to match simulated casualty numbers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

vbo 10y ago
To take matters even further and also somewhat address skin in the game, how about we do away with AI virtual warfare, since it too implies taxpayer money being used for eventually futile endeavours and simply organise a war-chess games between the leaders of the countries. President Trump, your move.
- boxy310 10y ago
  The prize purse and "simulated" aspect make me wonder how much the rise of football and the World Cup has sublimated democratic nations' drive for warfare as a path to national pride. The same argument also applies for the Olympics.
  - vbo 10y ago
    Interesting question. If we assume competitive sports to function in relation to testosterone or other hormonal drives when played or watched, an argument could be made that if the competitive hormonal 'itch' of men is scratched through sports, the desire to compete in war is lessened in the population, which in turn may affect politics. Purely speculative comment.

seren 10y ago

This is a part of the plot of Ian M. Banks 'Surface Detail' (2010). Two parties agrees to wage a war in virtual worlds to decide if virtual hells should be allowed or banned. Unsurprisingly, the losing party tries to move the war in the real world to reverse the losing trend.

XorNot 10y ago
Well it was a little more complicated than that. And also that whole book was amazing.
- moheeb 10y ago
  I'm not sure if 'Surface Detail' is a book or a movie, but I assumed there was more to it than a two sentence description.

adrianN 10y ago

The so-called "cyber war" will be a very important component of any future war between nation states. Taking over the enemies SCADA systems, power grid, net infrastructure etc. can do massive economic damage with few casualties. I don't think we'll ever see a civilized form of war where no real harm is done, because abiding by the rules of such a war is not a game-theoretic equilibrium. If a party builds a real army in addition to the simulated army and uses it, it will win the war.

sevenless 10y ago
We have a Geneva Convention, and international norms against nuclear weapons, which are also pretty good deterrents themselves (we hope). Just like nuclear powers sometimes wage limited conventional wars, it's possible to imagine a set of international laws and norms where disputes would be resolved by virtual conflicts without escalation to armed force. Advances in robotic war machines could make them so fearsome they deterred real-world armed conflict in favor of virtual conflict. (Of course, that's what they said about the machine gun before WW1)
- talmand 10y ago
  The Geneva Convention only works if both sides abide by it. Such deterrents only work because we allow them to work. Once one side decides the consequences of going against the norm is acceptable, or can be avoided altogether, then the rules no longer apply.
duncan_bayne 10y ago
What makes you think that disabling infrastructural targets will result in fewer casualties? Power for heating, cooling and hospitals. Transit systems for food distribution. Computers for synchronising all of the above. How many casualties do you think would result from shutting down infrastructure in NYC in mid winter? Even evacuation causes casualties. I was reading an assessment of the Fukushima evacuation that suggested fewer casualties would have resulted from just staying there.
- 10y ago

prodmerc 10y ago

"We lost" "Well, they're not taking [whatever the goal was] without a real fight!" It will then be AI/humans vs AI/humans cause one side will have to bear (real) heavy losses...

saiya-jin 10y ago

I think you're missing a big reason why wars are waged - massive cash flows stemming from delivering actual destruction and subsequent rebuilding. war is a dirty business, but business it is, and what a juicy one. simpler people hate banks/bankers, yet I haven't heard about any protesters occupying Lockheed, BAE or similar folks and wishing them jail. last thing these powerful corporations want is to change the game that works so well for them now.

sevenless 10y ago
This is a conspiracy theory, as while weapons manufacturers profit from war, they would profit any way governments bought, maintained or upgraded weapons. There is also no evidence that BAE or GE go out of their way to cause wars. Indeed, they would rather sell weapons to all sides. Arms races are certain profit, wars bring uncertainty, and cut off other massive cash flows (like the Iran oil embargo)
- boxy310 10y ago
  Pretty sure massive amounts of German arms manufacturers went out of business after both WWI and WWII. If the country is utterly defeated, it doesn't bode well for shareholders if the company is dismantled as part of peace talks, or if the government backing its payments shrivels up into nothing.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  imagine 50 years of no war, civil uprisings, no global enemy or power hungry empire, warmongering dictator etc. who would need latest war tech in massive numbers? war is a seed planted for long term future. look at middle east - I guarantee you 100 years from now on, this will still be a bad place to be. who will profit from it? all that arm all sides. when last few US wars were declared, for whatever funky official reasons, do you really believe that only US president and very few true and just in government were involved in deciding if, when, how, what tech will be used etc? in this I trust Russia much more - epicenter of power is pretty clear there. I don't believe in some Illuminati governing everything, nor do I believe that people with real power are not corrupted to their rotten core, owning favors left and right, their missteps are overlooked and their places +-secured etc. you don't get too high in politics (or army for that matter which becomes politics from certain level) as independent and just. just my gut feeling and common sense. but boy would i be glad to be wrong!

mdpopescu 10y ago

Or you could have the warring nations fight in an Eve Online Alliance Tournament :)

jdmichal 10y ago

The commitment and potential loss of resources while waging war is actually a valuable input to the system. If all war was virtual, then why not continuously wage war with everyone weaker than yourself all the time? Why would the strongest not virtually-subjugate every other nation? In the real world, resources aren't unlimited and losses are cumulative. So consideration must be made as to when it's worth committing to a war.

Domenic_S 10y ago

Original Star Trek did it! In this episode, the crew of the USS Enterprise visits a planet whose people fight a computer-simulated war against a neighboring planet. Although the war is fought via computer simulation, the citizens of each planet have to submit to real executions inside "disintegration booths" to meet the casualty counts of the simulated attacks. The crew of the Enterprise is caught in the middle and are told to submit themselves voluntarily for execution after being "killed" in an "enemy attack". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

coldcode 10y ago
Which also contains one of the best Spock lines ever: "Sir, there is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder" - neck pinch, boom.

marcosdumay 10y ago

That's not much different from how things work since the beginning of the nuclear era. Both sides compare their strength, and the weaker side often capitulates to avoid a real war. (It was less common on the past, but it always happened to some extent.) Of course, it does not always work.

spitfire 10y ago

Hollywood is way ahead of you. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

btbuildem 10y ago

You might find this an enjoyable read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)

pessimizer 10y ago

Wars of the future will be fought by people strapping bombs to themselves, obtaining the most destructive guns they can find and all the ammo that they can carry, and attacking civilian areas. 100 million dollar AI killing machines are mainly ways to funnel state money to the connected.