30 ms·

Navy F/A-18 squadron commander's take on AI repeatedly beating real pilot

262 points by tomohawk 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
melling 6y ago
I hope this impresses the military enough that they carve out several billion more for AI research. The US spends so much on the military. For some reason, we can’t justify more on civilian research but the military easily can, if it embraces it as part of its future.
- irrational 6y ago
  Yes, nothing could possibly go wrong with having a military minded AI.
  - djohnston 6y ago
    it's as inevitable as nuclear proliferation following WW2. you can slow it down, try and create a few key players and build around that, but it's always coming.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    This is a serious dilemma because: - If you don't, then the enemy will - If you do, then you're inviting the enemy to do the same So, without trust and mutual agreement on an international level, this is a self-propelling premise that cannot be stopped. Game theory 101.
    - landryraccoon 6y ago
      Even in that international agreement, someone still has the weapons. International agreements failed to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the strongest nations because why would they ever give up their nukes?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    It’s not minded, it’s not any different in than alphago or alphastar or the OpenAI dota bots, it doesn’t understand anything outside of the context of the game it’s playing. It doesn’t have a mind. On the “intelligence” spectrum it’s much closer to the guidance system in a heat seeking missile to than say even a dog, yet alone anything that we would define as having cognition.
    - irrational 6y ago
      Well, OP was talking about billions of dollars of DARPA funding going towards military AI research. I presume they would be trying to get much closer to cognition.
      - dogma1138 6y ago
        Why would you want cognition? Besides the billions of edge cases it may create why would you want to make a tool you can or would have to reason with?
        inetknght 6y ago
        > why would you want to make a tool you can or would have to reason with? Some might ask the same question in the context of human children.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        I would question that assumption. Autonomous military equipment (vehicles, planes, etc.) doesn’t require cognition in order to be useful.
      - CarbyAu 6y ago
        I obviously can't speak for Defence but my understanding was that a lot of the training et al was so that high command could have predictable outcomes. They may give troops on the front line some leeway, but within parameters for pursuit of a goal. I don't think Defence wants "uncontrolled" anything. Even if they manage to develop fully cognizant AI they will want to know the exact parameters it can work within. Of course, humans make errors...
  - netflixandkill 6y ago
    The only thing that will address that is a broad international agreement with sanctions and political consequences for aggressor AIs that violate it, just like agreements that mostly keep horrifying biological weapons off the table and mostly kept nuclear weapons programs in check. "mostly" still leaves a lot of room for bad actors, but these sorts of compromises have worked surprisingly well enough that the failures were notable. Political problems are only going to have political solutions, and almost by definition those are imperfect.
    - bsanr2 6y ago
      The problem isn't so much an AI involved in military planning so much as an AI raised by the military, similar to how we are more okay with children who grow up to join the military rather than child soldiers (or children raised to be in the military). Defense (defense!) should be a tool taught and employed only after one has developed an understanding and appreciation of what they should be defending. Frankly, we shouldn't be developing AI outside of institutions with STRONG ties to humanist missions (possibly including religion). AI is not for war, and it's not for "efficient" resource extraction and development; it's for helping humanity to safeguard itself and its potential.
    - landryraccoon 6y ago
      > mostly kept nuclear weapons programs in check. It has completely failed to keep nuclear weapons in check, imo. Keeping AI technology out of existence has the same problem as keeping nuclear weapons out of existence - the incentives are too great for any nation to have them. If a nation is armed with nuclear weapons, the only possible check on them is another nation that is armed with nuclear weapons. Thus even in the existing non-proliferation framework, the largest nations (the United States, Russia, China, several European powers) ALL still have nuclear weapons. The reason why is that if any nation was the only nuclear armed nation it would be impossible to defeat with any quantity of conventional force. The same argument applies for AI. It would be impossible avoid the existence of militarized AI if it provides the same level of force multiplication as nuclear weapons. It would be necessary for any nation to try to gain the same technology as a deterrent against attack by a rival that possesses the technology.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    True, but everything will go wrong with letting your enemy get there first.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Phew. Thankfully since we decided not to invest in defensive AI our power rivals also decided not to invest heavily in offensive AI. I was afraid the world wasn’t a fair and moral place for a minute there!
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Home security companies working in AI also tends not to end well in the movies, video games. It amuses me to think that Aperture Science had a protocol for rogue AIs with the codename "Birthday Cake". GLaDOS did not understand why all of the humans kept talking about cake as they died. They really seem to like cake...
- godelski 6y ago
  A lot of this has always confused me. In times of peace you should invest more in civilian research. In times of war or near war, more military. They complement one another too. Civilian research will always be used by military, from basic understanding of how people act, to lasers, to economic theory. One helps the other. The reverse direction is slower though because it is often held close to the vest for a bit of time.
  - CobrastanJorji 6y ago
    Government science investment frequently comes from fear. ARPA was the US government's big "give money to research" program. It was started in response to Sputnik because we feared we were falling behind the Soviets. Then in 1969-73, Senate majority leader Mansfield decided that this research might be being misused to fund science in ways that wasn't directly useful to fighting Soviets, so ARPA became DARPA (the D is for Defense!) and now researchers needed to explain why their science might help build missiles.
  - 75675446875444 6y ago
    Peace time is the best time to invest in military research because you'll be more prepared to secure an advantageous position when a conflict emerges. If you only invest during an in-progress conflict then what you're really doing is playing catch up.
    - godelski 6y ago
      Read past my first few sentences. I'm arguing that civilian research IS military research. I'm also not arguing 100% in one vs 100% in another, such a scheme would be absurdly idiotic.
      - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        > "I'm arguing that civilian research IS military research." Which is prima facie untrue. While there are benefits to basic research over the long term, it took roughly 60 years from the discovery of the laser to the beginnings of deployable laser weaponry today. Those sorts of timeframes aren't that useful for a military expecting a conflict in the next few years.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  It’s wildly backwards that this is where things are.
- 75675446875444 6y ago
  Despite all the Smedley Butler memes the US actually spends a pretty normal amount of money for a country with a large economy. Most people don't grasp how much the US economy dwarfs that of other nations.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Sort of. We spend 4% of our GDP, the average is 2%. So we still spend double as a percent of GDP, and yeah, we have the biggest GDP.
    - 75675446875444 6y ago
      I agree that our spending doesn't scale perfectly but I think some of that is explained by context. The US is the single largest contributor to NATO in terms of the value of the equipment and vehicle support they provide, they are the primary naval force policing shipping lanes, random acts of high tension diplomacy (like that time they parked an aircraft carrier to guard one part of China from another part of China), and you can probably see at this point that my argument boils down to "yeah but the US uses their military for real things."
  - Retric 6y ago
    Germany and Canada both spend 1.3% of their GDP’s on the military. United Kingdom and China are at 1.9%. However, the US is all the way up at 3.4%. A 30% cut would still leave the US well above the international average and due to it’s sheer economic might result in a clear military advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... Consider the US Air-force is unquestionably the #1 most powerful Air-force in the world with the US Navy comfortably holding the #2. That’s frankly expensive.
    - 75675446875444 6y ago
      Why do you feel these are good comparisons to the US? None of those countries are as involved in conflict zones as the US and I'd argue can afford to keep their costs down because of the support implied by the US's presence in NATO. It's easy to keep costs down when you're not doing much in the world. The only exception amongst the countries you specified is China who, despite memes, has primarily been focused on countering a potential American offensive rather than taking a serious role in the world as a projector of military power. On top of that, things like their hypersonic missiles have been attributed to espionage programs (Raytheon hack in the case of hypersonics) so you could also argue that their spending is lower than it would otherwise be because their focus has been on catching up rather than leapfrogging to a dominant position. Overall, your criticism that it's expensive mainly applies when compared to the European nations who are famous for favoring idealism and speeches over getting their hands dirty and making a material difference. Exemplifying this, The Hague itself has often been ridiculed for mostly being a playpen to lock up poor african warlords and people who were only able to be caught as a result of actions taken by the US and Russia as they stomp around the Middle East. In your same link we see that US allies in conflict zones spend much higher than the countries you cited. Saudi Arabia spends 8.8% gdp, and Israel spends 4.4%. Branching out from US allies to countries of military significance either globally or regionally we see Russia at 3.9%, and Pakistan 4.0%, even Ukraine spends 3.8%. The US isn't even in the top 15 in terms of military spending relative to gdp. I do agree that if you're a country with no responsibilities then spending around 2% is fine but American foreign policy has generally tried to dream a little bigger than sitting in their laurels and finger waggling at the world.
- umvi 6y ago
  US spends so much on military because other countries essentially outsource their own military to the US. For example, the EU spends very little on military in large part because of a large US military presence in Europe.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Hopefully we can remove many or most of those bases in the future. No reason to be the world police or to let other counties outsource their military to American lives.
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      The counterargument to this is that dependence on the US military keeps other countries from putting in the resources to become military competitors. It's as similar argument to how sanctioning Chinese tech companies ends up encouraging them to develop indigenous technologies that will later compete for market share on other continents. The US having a dominant military presence globally ensures that other actors either don't even bother spending on a military or don't have conflicts they can practice their militaries on (a big problem for China when they can't see if their new toys actually work) If only the US has active military experience then it's a lot easier and cheaper to fight inexperienced competitors. Even for allies like Europe, if the US leaves the EU to develop a military and they get some experience with fully self-reliant overseas adventures in North Africa or the Middle East, how do you know they won't turn Fascist/Communist/fancy future political ideology one day (or the reverse for the US) and start launching invasions across the Atlantic?
      - sumedh 6y ago
        > The counterargument to this is that dependence on the US military keeps other countries from putting in the resources to become military competitors. You dont need to be a direct military competitor, Afghanistan and Iraq have shown that you can still defeat US with a thousand cuts.
        6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  Northrop carrier qualified the X-47 as an unmanned combat vehicle. Navy said, great, let's turn it into a tanker! Northrop said nope but Boeing said they'd be happy to. So billions as long as those robots stay in their lane.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aurizon 6y ago
The classic dogfight can only persist in the hearts and minds of old pilots. A modern state of the art unpiloted fighter, with no human pilot or the burden of life support, and G limitations will be lighter with the same engines, capable of 30-50+ G maneuvers(for which is has been specially designed), with modern long range standoff weapons and suitable radars, will slaughter any human if faces. The high G ability will leave any standoff missiles fired against it in the dust by active evasion. It will be vulnerable to high grade stealthed missiles. as well as hard ballistic stealthed rounds shot from afar - unless it detects and evades. In fact, any modern robot craft will perform high G random jinks to make path prediction difficult. The soone the USA realizes this, the better. You can be sure Russia/China have learned this lesson.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  I've said the exact same thing in other threads. You can do fakeouts a human can't possibly do like corkscrew at 500rpm and pull 50gs randomly and repeatedly when a radar is trying to predict your path. If the engineers in charge of designing these crafts around an AI pilot think outside the box we could see some pretty wild tech.
  - aurizon 6y ago
    Yes, we need to shake the human limitations off and go full cyber.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I've said the exact same thing in other threads. You can do fakeouts a human can't possibly do like corkscrew at 500rpm and pull 50gs randomly and repeatedly when a radar is trying to predict your path. Those maneuvers sound like they'd destroy the plane.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
      I'm thinking of a plane built from the ground up to never be piloted by a human. A missile like drone really.
aurizon 6y ago
This shows how the old experienced people can fall into the trap of over-rating the 'hands-on' human experience. In fact a human will have no chance at all against an AI operated fighter designed as a high-G fighter. We saw how the video AI was able to win with the ability of the AI fighter limited to the human driven planes ability. What do you think will happen when the AI has 30-50 G turn capability. This is why modern missiles have guaranteed kill zones - they have 30-50G turn capability. Modern jamming is running out of room gradually as tech advances, so missiles can still be jammed for quite a while as that arms race evolves.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tempestn 6y ago
  Which of your points do you feel the article writer was disagreeing with?
  - aurizon 6y ago
    Well, this was set up as a fight with equal resources. The same plane, flown by AI/Human. In a real case you want to set up 'win'scenarios = sure kills. The AI was able to dominate. He seemed to think that a real human in a real plane against the same plane with AI, would draw upon human resources to feel G at 600 knots etc and exceed the ability of the AI to draw on those resources - being an unfeeling machine. In fact, once stripped down AI fighting platforms get made, they will dominate. It will take a design cycle to remove the human life support weight and to remove the cockpit etc,so it can be a 30-50G missile platform - that is what it will be. AI attacked versus AI ground defence missiles with similar AI counter fighters. One can postulate a similar AI blizzard of radar/radio/optical jamming by both sides that will see-saw back and forth as tech develops. We fancy ourselves and look down on Russia, in fact Russia has a capable educational system. It was killed as the USSR by bad economic policies = central planning = a dead horse nobody can ride to victory. Now they are dragged down by the Oligarch tax = oligarchs steal any good idea and company that another Russian creates take it over with a faked shareholders and board meeting = they fill all roles, and drain cash from it. There have been hundreds of these and they are slowly and wurely killing Russia. Look at Putin, poisoning other politicians. /politics off....;)
hpoe 6y ago
Saw an interesting video on the military channel a couple of years back that pointed out something important about these super powerful, super fast, super expensive aircraft. You'd be better off from a cost perspective running a swarm of hundreds of drone strapped with explosives, only one of them needs to get lucky to disable a multi-million dollar plane and the drones themselves can be pretty cheap.
- kaiju0 6y ago
  Using numbers to overwhelm a weapons system and pop the unkillable machine
  - nickff 6y ago
    This is a very old idea, which has never fulfilled its promise; the best modern example may be that of the 'Jeune Ecole'.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Fry: "I heard one time you single-handedly defeated a horde of rampaging somethings in the something something system" Brannigan: "Killbots? A trifle. It was simply a matter of outsmarting them." Fry: "Wow, I never would've thought of that." Brannigan: "You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down. Kif, show them the medal I won."
- kcb 6y ago
  > You'd be better off from a cost perspective running a swarm of hundreds of drone strapped with explosives, only one of them needs to get lucky to disable a multi-million dollar plane and the drones themselves can be pretty cheap. Have you not just described an anti-air missile?
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    No. The anti-air missile doesn't have the "hundreds of" element. Also, drones are far slower than a missile, and even far slower than the airplane they're trying to target.
tomohawk 6y ago
> The fact that in the contest, the AI had perfect information at all times, and rules of engagement were not a factor, are not inconsequential details. I recognize that providing the amount of data and sensor fusion the AI would require to perform at the same level in a real aerial engagement (one that does not take place in cyberspace) is not a small undertaking and still a bit in the future. The rules of engagement discussion could fill up the syllabus for the entire semester of an ethics class, and will always be a touchy subject with regards to AI's involvement in war. This is probably the important bit, and the bit that most needs a human in the loop. Once the decision is made, engage the AI and let it do its thing. Of course, if some regime out there didn't care at all about ROE or human life or killing the wrong people, they could build a bunch of killing machines to take out anything that moves. It would be more efficient.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  I think this is how other species will eventually come upon our world... just a whole bunch of machines fighting each other with the humans long gone.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    This book relevant to your interests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible
kaiju0 6y ago
I'm very curious of the gods eye factor of the video game environment vs the real world sensor processing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
moneytide1 6y ago
I'm assuming combat aircraft are capable of delivering more G's than a human body can handle, though pilots train to sustain brief bouts of high G for quick maneuvering - is this limit factored into to the "AI player" handling? Is it meant to simulate another human pilot or is it human versus the physical limits of a machine?
- tempestn 6y ago
  Since the human player was in a simulator, the limits of the human body weren't a factor here. As for whether the jets are capable of delivering more Gs than a human body can handle, I'm speculating, but I'm not sure it would make sense for current jets to be designed to do so, at least not by a large margin, since that capacity would be wasted. Future jets without human pilots will certainly be able to do so though, which will make the contest even more lopsided.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  The last match was apparently with both players (the AI and human) simulating a 9-Gs maneuver. Because it was a simulation, the human didn't black out. Its just a game. Albeit a well simulated game close to dogfighting "reality", but its a game nonetheless.
- chiph 6y ago
  If I were building an AI commanded aircraft I would have it use every G the airframe could handle. No pilot means fewer maneuvering limitations and an increased chance of victory. An intermediate step could be an AI-assisted aircraft. It might be better at setting up shots, and still work within the physical limitations of the human inside. Something not mentioned is an AI powered plane's ability to more-rapidly change from positive to negative G's (not sure if this is technically called jerk or not). A human has a really tough time making that transition.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    There was another discussion a couple months ago [0] which linked to an MIT lecture on Youtube about the F-22 and its design. At 40 minutes in [1], he describes a scenario with an F-15 where the pilot could rip the wings off of the plane. He contrasts that the F-22's software was designed to make the most use of control surfaces and limiters to prevent that. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23588760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23588760 [1]: https://youtu.be/Evhrk5tY-Yo?t=2428 https://youtu.be/Evhrk5tY-Yo?t=2428
ilaksh 6y ago
Its so strange that people are not making the connection between this and killer robots.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  I’m sure China and Russia are making that connection with gusto. Should we?
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    I mean to say that those systems are in fact killer robots already. There is nothing special about China and Russia having similar systems. The same military requirements apply everywhere. And just because in the US it is not be popularized as "killer robots" does not mean that it is not already that. Its kind of silly that some people think that the US military has some type of military moral high ground in this case or any. Or that by not explicitly saying "killer robots" that means it is not so.
GhostVII 6y ago
Is there value in having a pilot, just to increase the consequences of shooting down a plane? When Iran shot down a US drone, there was pretty much no real response by the US. If it was a manned plane, there would almost certainly be at least retaliatory strikes, so Iran (and other countries) are going to be much less likely to shoot down a manned F-18 than an unmanned one. So maybe having manned fighters is valuable just to increase the barrier to engagement. And regardless, is there even value in having autonomous fighter jets when we already have advanced missiles? It doesn't matter how good the pilot/AI is if they are just firing missiles from miles away. We already have missiles that can loiter for hours before choosing a target and attacking it (ex. IAI Harpy) - to me that is much more valuable and dangerous than an AI fighter. Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War is a good book to read about it.
- deep_etcetera 6y ago
  It would be more efficient to use drones but precommit to shooting a soldier back in the US whenever a drone gets shot down.
  - totetsu 6y ago
    You could even host some Iranian Revolutionary Guard members on site at the drone facility to do the deed.
    - rimjongun 6y ago
      The levels of efficiency we are reaching on this thread are mind blowing.
  - clarus 6y ago
    Morally not possible.
    - _visgean 6y ago
      /r/whoosh
uberdru 6y ago
The real question is whether you want a society without pilots.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Flight Attendants say: NO!
29athrowaway 6y ago
Dogfights are a mostly extinct scenario.
subsubzero 6y ago
Whats really incredible is the AI company behind these wargames(Heron Systems) only has 25 employees[1]. Which to me seems very small considering the engineering behind making this successful. [1] - https://www.sbir.gov/sbc/heron-systems-incorporated https://www.sbir.gov/sbc/heron-systems-incorporated
ryanmarsh 6y ago
The reason you're seeing this story is not because the Pentagon felt like you would enjoy some candor on a whiz-bang AI thing. No, they're way out in front of this issue. This is part of a prolonged PR campaign to prepare the public for reducing or eliminating human-in-the-loop limitations. A wet dream for systems guys since they were children reading sci-fi. The Pentagon has been using robots to kill robots and other humans since before 9/11. This story has a long arc. We meat bags are the major limitation for machines of war and that limitation will be engineered out.
xvilka 6y ago
To remove the need of pilot completely a lot of still have to be done - making the same AI capable of the full cycle - from taking off to engagement, from the engagement to landing. Combining all these in the same software is harder than making them work independently. Maybe it will be just a few separate AIs. Then the interconnect problem arises.
warmcat 6y ago
What is stopping from using existing remote pilot drone technology and using it for dog fights and other missions that fighter pilots do?
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  Latency.
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    MIT released open source autonomous drone software that could fly through dense forest at ridiculously fast speeds. In 2015.
  - jessriedel 6y ago
    Do you actually know that to be true? Speed-of-light delays would be important for pilots based in Montana flying in Iraq, but not if the remote pilot is in the theatre. And if it's not speed of light, it's a solvable problem.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Jamming and ECW. You can't rely on communications being possible in key moments.
  - warmcat 6y ago
    Same can be said about drones though right?
greentimer 6y ago
For all we know this kind of AI is much more advanced than we think, even up to AGI. All that needs to be true is that the AI has brain implanted us to make it look like nothing is happening.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
credit_guy 6y ago
Drones can be, and have been jammed, or even captured [1]. You need now, and will continue to need for the foreseeable future pilots in planes. But teams of piloted fighters and drones? That will be the winning combination. And how can a single human command a flock of 20 aircraft? By giving short orders, and letting AI taking care of the rest. The ethics of killing will never be left to AI, but the technicalities of acquiring and prosecuting the target? You bet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
- fastball 6y ago
  Aren't current drones mostly remote-controlled? In this case the AI is onboard, right? So much lower surface area for being hacked.
  - hammock 6y ago
    Goodness. Are you suggesting AI-powered flying killing machines that we can't supervise or control remotely (even temporarily due to jamming) are ok?
    - ummonk 6y ago
      They’re called cruise missiles.
      - hammock 6y ago
        Touche
- awb 6y ago
  > The ethics of killing will never be left to AI I hope you're right, but what makes you so sure? In a wartime scenario, if a country is short on skilled personnel why wouldn't they release AI combatants if they had the tech? Especially if they're facing a perceived aggressor or defending their territory.
chillacy 6y ago
> Hell, I am only a voting member as far as the flight controls are concerned in the Super Hornet anyways. If I put a control input in that is not aerodynamically sound (i.e. could result in a departure from controlled flight), the flight control system will not move the control surface or will move a different surface to give me the movement I am requesting. Who is flying who? That's a good take on the matter. Computer systems are already a big part of the aircraft, in the near term this could result in some pretty wicked copilot software.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Now that AI assist is being openly discussed in the wider anglophone press, I wonder if we'll see a diminution in "unsafe unprofessional" air intercepts? (I don't know what the search terms would be in chinese[1], but "искусственный интеллект су-35" gets plenty of older —at least by HN standards— hits.) [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28905504 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28905504 suggests china has bought while they learn to build. Someone who knows more chinese than I might wish to try "人工智能苏35".
catmistake 6y ago
The US and NATO has inexpensive anti-drone technology. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/903152237/bald-eagle-in-michigan-destroys-wildlife-mapping-drone https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/903152237/bald-eagle-in-michi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYVyj6vf3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYVyj6vf3Y
- saithound 6y ago
  Unmanned combat air vehicles tend to have net weights in the 30kg-2000kg range. The F/A-18 is closer to 15000kg. We'd need gryphons.
99chrisbard 6y ago
My kind of AI drone~ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417/f-16-drone/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417...
Ericson2314 6y ago
Given how vastly different WWI and WII were from their predecessors, I don't see planning for WWIII being a very useful exercise. The game theory is so vastly open ended, and capabilities of belligerents so great it Bogles the mind. (Oh, and I fail to see how China wouldn't win. Heh.) That just leaves "counter-insurgency" empire building crap which is super inefficient at even the stated goals, and the stated goals are worthless. Therefore I conclude the whole exercise is pointless and a waste of money.
RandyRanderson 6y ago
Three huge issues with this test: 1. The AI had "total situational awareness" (perfect position, direction, velocity of opponent). Even given 360 cameras, radar, etc there is still uncertainty, errors, etc. 2. The human was an expert pilot, not a sim expert (see videos, he was going way too fast several times, not something he'd do in a real plane). A DCS master would likely have done better. 3. The AI wasn't trying to avoid head-ons. With this and the Starcraft2 blink micro "win" I'm just going to these from now on.
- e12e 6y ago
  > 3. The AI wasn't trying to avoid head-ons. Why should it? Presumably the AI pilot is backed up / remote / not precious - while the human pilot has an inherent value - isn't reckless disregard one benefit of automated systems?
  - RandyRanderson 6y ago
    You don't risk an expensive plane with head-ons - that's what missiles are for. This was testing the AI. If real-world AI was going to be deployed in warfare shooting down manned planes, you'd make custom hardware that is smaller, faster and 10-100x cheaper than a f-35.
- edelans 6y ago
  4. The human pilot doesn't experience any load factor, he can sustain 9Gs doing circles for over a minute
babesh 6y ago
The US military already has drones that are flown remotely. It seems to be a small step to add a dogfighting AI to a plane and just have the remote pilot sic the AI at another plane. The remote pilot just has to reengage after the fighting is over. That’s assuming that they can add the sensors and AI to track the other plane. As the author mentioned, the dogfighting AI seems to counter the real pilot’s moves effectively while maximizing the amount of energy maintained. It seems to have caused the real pilot to overshoot or undershoot while maintaining or gaining energy. The countering also included adjusting aim to hit the real pilot as the real pilot tried to maneuver away. It wasn’t just perfect information or efficient flying.
- 2rsf 6y ago
  Current drones are slow speed, slow maneuverability vehicles. I suppose you can make a drone fighter, but that does not exist yet.
  - babesh 6y ago
    The US air force had drone f-16s and used them to test missiles (they shot the missiles at them). https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417/f-16-drone/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417... https://www.boeing.com/defense/support/qf-16/index.page https://www.boeing.com/defense/support/qf-16/index.page
    - 2rsf 6y ago
      > it was noted that with a little extra work the QF-16 could be turned into a combat UAV for dangerous missions like SEAD (suppression of enemy defenses) or attacking ground targets guarded by heavy air defenses. https://www.uasvision.com/2014/06/05/target-qf16-could-become-mq-16-lawn-dart/ https://www.uasvision.com/2014/06/05/target-qf16-could-becom...
cgrealy 6y ago
>>the argument about the death of the dogfight, or that there is no need for within visual range engagements anymore is a tired one. There was a pretty popular movie in the ‘80s about that very argument, so I am not going to rehash it here. Regardless of the actual merits of whether dogfights are a thing any more, I feel like "because Top Gun" is not exactly a sound argument.
- fountainofage 6y ago
  What's interesting to me - I thought I was a pretty big fan of Top Gun, but now I'm not so sure. I did not pick up there is an argument about whether or not dog fighting still was needed. The only "argument" I recall was the recap of how pilot deaths increased after training stopped, and decreased after training started. But it was a one off history lesson as part of the Top Gun school intro. But the rest or the movie seemed very clearly - yes, the US needs dog fighting to defend its interests across the globe. There seemed to be absolutely no challenging of that idea within Top Gun.
  - cgrealy 6y ago
    My main issue with it is that the movie is over 30 years old and the argument in the movie is based on data from a conflict that began 55 years ago. Maybe I'm completely wrong (I'm not a pilot and have no military knowledge), but I feel like things have moved on since then in terms of both the technology and the types of wars fought. Maybe someone more knowledgable than me can answer... when was the last time a US combat aircraft engaged in a real dogfight?
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    That was an 80s movie. An all out war with Russia was still a possibility then.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      Over the past few years, I've been hoping to run into an 80s soviet movie with heavily armed evil american antagonists. The soviet ideological indoctrination and censorship game must've been strong, because so far everything I've seen either has pirates/hooligans/etc. as antagonists or fails to even have a "man vs. man" plot at all.
poof131 6y ago
Too funny, I went through flight school with Colin. Great guy and glad to see he picked up command but disagree with him on the benefits of BFM and the true value of manned fighter jets over the coming decades. The US military is caught between two wars. One, against opponents who can’t really hit back where fighter jets are overkill. Better off with AC-130s and the like. The other against opponents who can hit back, where the battle will be won or lost in space, cyber, economically, and possibly through nuclear warfare. Even with regards to fighters, the amount of money spent on BFM is really a boondoggle. It’s like spending billions training the infantry to knife fight. It’s not Vietnam and the last gunfighter with regards to missiles and targeting. Is not the AIM-9X targeting AI itself? A great book that rings more true than ever talks about the obsolescence of weapons systems. I believe it was Freedman[1] A key thesis is that as a predominant weapon system becomes more vulnerable, it becomes more expensive, as it’s burdened with more defensive measures to survive from cheaper more expendable systems. In World War 2 the canonical example was the battle ship and the aircraft. Now it’s the fighter jet and the missile (or drone) etc. Just look at the ridiculous state of the JSF. Manned missile trucks are valuable for countering electronic attack, but not dogfighting. Still, practice dogfighting is one of the most fun things you can do, too bad it hasn’t really been applicable since Vietnam. This post from the other day reminded me how fun it is and seems like a great fit for VR.[2] Onward last Samurais! Just try not to spend all the taxpayers money on the way out. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Future-War-History-Lawrence-Freedman-ebook/dp/B01JZ2QLFQ/ https://www.amazon.com/Future-War-History-Lawrence-Freedman-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24255191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24255191
- cryptonector 6y ago
  Are manned missile trucks even valuable for countering electronic attack? I'm thinking "no". A missile truck can definitely be AI'ed or controlled remotely. Perhaps only CAS can't be made unmanned. Cost is a huge problem. We now have unmanned carrier launched refueling trucks that I bet are incredibly cheap. Make them a tad bigger, put missiles in them, and you have a super cheap replacement for the F-35. The F-35 can stick around in small numbers for when you really need a human, if you really need a human in the cockpit. Cost has to drive us to this.
diskmuncher 6y ago
The setup of the game is simply unfair for a comparison between AI and human. If you want to keep the perfect data link between the simulator's outputs and the AI player computer, then at least let the human play by watching the (God's eye) display with the aircraft sprites sporting those kill-point spears and ditch the HUD. The objective would simply be to touch the enemy aircraft with that spear. The HUD is cool and all. But how do I know where the enemy is if it is outside of the HUD's field? Think about how the AI knew. :) And while we are at this, maybe just invite a young gamer instead of a real pilot.
antonvs 6y ago
They don't select fighter pilots for their writing or reasoning skills, and it shows in this article. There doesn't appear to be anything worth paying attention to here.

262 points by tomohawk 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

I hope this impresses the military enough that they carve out several billion more for AI research. The US spends so much on the military. For some reason, we can’t justify more on civilian research but the military easily can, if it embraces it as part of its future.

irrational 6y ago
Yes, nothing could possibly go wrong with having a military minded AI.
- djohnston 6y ago
  it's as inevitable as nuclear proliferation following WW2. you can slow it down, try and create a few key players and build around that, but it's always coming.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  This is a serious dilemma because: - If you don't, then the enemy will - If you do, then you're inviting the enemy to do the same So, without trust and mutual agreement on an international level, this is a self-propelling premise that cannot be stopped. Game theory 101.
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    Even in that international agreement, someone still has the weapons. International agreements failed to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the strongest nations because why would they ever give up their nukes?
- dogma1138 6y ago
  It’s not minded, it’s not any different in than alphago or alphastar or the OpenAI dota bots, it doesn’t understand anything outside of the context of the game it’s playing. It doesn’t have a mind. On the “intelligence” spectrum it’s much closer to the guidance system in a heat seeking missile to than say even a dog, yet alone anything that we would define as having cognition.
  - irrational 6y ago
    Well, OP was talking about billions of dollars of DARPA funding going towards military AI research. I presume they would be trying to get much closer to cognition.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Why would you want cognition? Besides the billions of edge cases it may create why would you want to make a tool you can or would have to reason with?
      - inetknght 6y ago
        > why would you want to make a tool you can or would have to reason with? Some might ask the same question in the context of human children.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      I would question that assumption. Autonomous military equipment (vehicles, planes, etc.) doesn’t require cognition in order to be useful.
    - CarbyAu 6y ago
      I obviously can't speak for Defence but my understanding was that a lot of the training et al was so that high command could have predictable outcomes. They may give troops on the front line some leeway, but within parameters for pursuit of a goal. I don't think Defence wants "uncontrolled" anything. Even if they manage to develop fully cognizant AI they will want to know the exact parameters it can work within. Of course, humans make errors...
- netflixandkill 6y ago
  The only thing that will address that is a broad international agreement with sanctions and political consequences for aggressor AIs that violate it, just like agreements that mostly keep horrifying biological weapons off the table and mostly kept nuclear weapons programs in check. "mostly" still leaves a lot of room for bad actors, but these sorts of compromises have worked surprisingly well enough that the failures were notable. Political problems are only going to have political solutions, and almost by definition those are imperfect.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    The problem isn't so much an AI involved in military planning so much as an AI raised by the military, similar to how we are more okay with children who grow up to join the military rather than child soldiers (or children raised to be in the military). Defense (defense!) should be a tool taught and employed only after one has developed an understanding and appreciation of what they should be defending. Frankly, we shouldn't be developing AI outside of institutions with STRONG ties to humanist missions (possibly including religion). AI is not for war, and it's not for "efficient" resource extraction and development; it's for helping humanity to safeguard itself and its potential.
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    > mostly kept nuclear weapons programs in check. It has completely failed to keep nuclear weapons in check, imo. Keeping AI technology out of existence has the same problem as keeping nuclear weapons out of existence - the incentives are too great for any nation to have them. If a nation is armed with nuclear weapons, the only possible check on them is another nation that is armed with nuclear weapons. Thus even in the existing non-proliferation framework, the largest nations (the United States, Russia, China, several European powers) ALL still have nuclear weapons. The reason why is that if any nation was the only nuclear armed nation it would be impossible to defeat with any quantity of conventional force. The same argument applies for AI. It would be impossible avoid the existence of militarized AI if it provides the same level of force multiplication as nuclear weapons. It would be necessary for any nation to try to gain the same technology as a deterrent against attack by a rival that possesses the technology.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  True, but everything will go wrong with letting your enemy get there first.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Phew. Thankfully since we decided not to invest in defensive AI our power rivals also decided not to invest heavily in offensive AI. I was afraid the world wasn’t a fair and moral place for a minute there!
- hinkley 6y ago
  Home security companies working in AI also tends not to end well in the movies, video games. It amuses me to think that Aperture Science had a protocol for rogue AIs with the codename "Birthday Cake". GLaDOS did not understand why all of the humans kept talking about cake as they died. They really seem to like cake...
godelski 6y ago
A lot of this has always confused me. In times of peace you should invest more in civilian research. In times of war or near war, more military. They complement one another too. Civilian research will always be used by military, from basic understanding of how people act, to lasers, to economic theory. One helps the other. The reverse direction is slower though because it is often held close to the vest for a bit of time.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  Government science investment frequently comes from fear. ARPA was the US government's big "give money to research" program. It was started in response to Sputnik because we feared we were falling behind the Soviets. Then in 1969-73, Senate majority leader Mansfield decided that this research might be being misused to fund science in ways that wasn't directly useful to fighting Soviets, so ARPA became DARPA (the D is for Defense!) and now researchers needed to explain why their science might help build missiles.
- 75675446875444 6y ago
  Peace time is the best time to invest in military research because you'll be more prepared to secure an advantageous position when a conflict emerges. If you only invest during an in-progress conflict then what you're really doing is playing catch up.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Read past my first few sentences. I'm arguing that civilian research IS military research. I'm also not arguing 100% in one vs 100% in another, such a scheme would be absurdly idiotic.
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      > "I'm arguing that civilian research IS military research." Which is prima facie untrue. While there are benefits to basic research over the long term, it took roughly 60 years from the discovery of the laser to the beginnings of deployable laser weaponry today. Those sorts of timeframes aren't that useful for a military expecting a conflict in the next few years.
Waterluvian 6y ago
It’s wildly backwards that this is where things are.
75675446875444 6y ago
Despite all the Smedley Butler memes the US actually spends a pretty normal amount of money for a country with a large economy. Most people don't grasp how much the US economy dwarfs that of other nations.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Sort of. We spend 4% of our GDP, the average is 2%. So we still spend double as a percent of GDP, and yeah, we have the biggest GDP.
  - 75675446875444 6y ago
    I agree that our spending doesn't scale perfectly but I think some of that is explained by context. The US is the single largest contributor to NATO in terms of the value of the equipment and vehicle support they provide, they are the primary naval force policing shipping lanes, random acts of high tension diplomacy (like that time they parked an aircraft carrier to guard one part of China from another part of China), and you can probably see at this point that my argument boils down to "yeah but the US uses their military for real things."
- Retric 6y ago
  Germany and Canada both spend 1.3% of their GDP’s on the military. United Kingdom and China are at 1.9%. However, the US is all the way up at 3.4%. A 30% cut would still leave the US well above the international average and due to it’s sheer economic might result in a clear military advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... Consider the US Air-force is unquestionably the #1 most powerful Air-force in the world with the US Navy comfortably holding the #2. That’s frankly expensive.
  - 75675446875444 6y ago
    Why do you feel these are good comparisons to the US? None of those countries are as involved in conflict zones as the US and I'd argue can afford to keep their costs down because of the support implied by the US's presence in NATO. It's easy to keep costs down when you're not doing much in the world. The only exception amongst the countries you specified is China who, despite memes, has primarily been focused on countering a potential American offensive rather than taking a serious role in the world as a projector of military power. On top of that, things like their hypersonic missiles have been attributed to espionage programs (Raytheon hack in the case of hypersonics) so you could also argue that their spending is lower than it would otherwise be because their focus has been on catching up rather than leapfrogging to a dominant position. Overall, your criticism that it's expensive mainly applies when compared to the European nations who are famous for favoring idealism and speeches over getting their hands dirty and making a material difference. Exemplifying this, The Hague itself has often been ridiculed for mostly being a playpen to lock up poor african warlords and people who were only able to be caught as a result of actions taken by the US and Russia as they stomp around the Middle East. In your same link we see that US allies in conflict zones spend much higher than the countries you cited. Saudi Arabia spends 8.8% gdp, and Israel spends 4.4%. Branching out from US allies to countries of military significance either globally or regionally we see Russia at 3.9%, and Pakistan 4.0%, even Ukraine spends 3.8%. The US isn't even in the top 15 in terms of military spending relative to gdp. I do agree that if you're a country with no responsibilities then spending around 2% is fine but American foreign policy has generally tried to dream a little bigger than sitting in their laurels and finger waggling at the world.
umvi 6y ago
US spends so much on military because other countries essentially outsource their own military to the US. For example, the EU spends very little on military in large part because of a large US military presence in Europe.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Hopefully we can remove many or most of those bases in the future. No reason to be the world police or to let other counties outsource their military to American lives.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    The counterargument to this is that dependence on the US military keeps other countries from putting in the resources to become military competitors. It's as similar argument to how sanctioning Chinese tech companies ends up encouraging them to develop indigenous technologies that will later compete for market share on other continents. The US having a dominant military presence globally ensures that other actors either don't even bother spending on a military or don't have conflicts they can practice their militaries on (a big problem for China when they can't see if their new toys actually work) If only the US has active military experience then it's a lot easier and cheaper to fight inexperienced competitors. Even for allies like Europe, if the US leaves the EU to develop a military and they get some experience with fully self-reliant overseas adventures in North Africa or the Middle East, how do you know they won't turn Fascist/Communist/fancy future political ideology one day (or the reverse for the US) and start launching invasions across the Atlantic?
    - sumedh 6y ago
      > The counterargument to this is that dependence on the US military keeps other countries from putting in the resources to become military competitors. You dont need to be a direct military competitor, Afghanistan and Iraq have shown that you can still defeat US with a thousand cuts.
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hindsightbias 6y ago
Northrop carrier qualified the X-47 as an unmanned combat vehicle. Navy said, great, let's turn it into a tanker! Northrop said nope but Boeing said they'd be happy to. So billions as long as those robots stay in their lane.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

aurizon 6y ago

The classic dogfight can only persist in the hearts and minds of old pilots. A modern state of the art unpiloted fighter, with no human pilot or the burden of life support, and G limitations will be lighter with the same engines, capable of 30-50+ G maneuvers(for which is has been specially designed), with modern long range standoff weapons and suitable radars, will slaughter any human if faces. The high G ability will leave any standoff missiles fired against it in the dust by active evasion. It will be vulnerable to high grade stealthed missiles. as well as hard ballistic stealthed rounds shot from afar - unless it detects and evades. In fact, any modern robot craft will perform high G random jinks to make path prediction difficult. The soone the USA realizes this, the better. You can be sure Russia/China have learned this lesson.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
I've said the exact same thing in other threads. You can do fakeouts a human can't possibly do like corkscrew at 500rpm and pull 50gs randomly and repeatedly when a radar is trying to predict your path. If the engineers in charge of designing these crafts around an AI pilot think outside the box we could see some pretty wild tech.
- aurizon 6y ago
  Yes, we need to shake the human limitations off and go full cyber.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I've said the exact same thing in other threads. You can do fakeouts a human can't possibly do like corkscrew at 500rpm and pull 50gs randomly and repeatedly when a radar is trying to predict your path. Those maneuvers sound like they'd destroy the plane.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    I'm thinking of a plane built from the ground up to never be piloted by a human. A missile like drone really.

aurizon 6y ago

This shows how the old experienced people can fall into the trap of over-rating the 'hands-on' human experience. In fact a human will have no chance at all against an AI operated fighter designed as a high-G fighter. We saw how the video AI was able to win with the ability of the AI fighter limited to the human driven planes ability. What do you think will happen when the AI has 30-50 G turn capability. This is why modern missiles have guaranteed kill zones - they have 30-50G turn capability. Modern jamming is running out of room gradually as tech advances, so missiles can still be jammed for quite a while as that arms race evolves.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tempestn 6y ago
Which of your points do you feel the article writer was disagreeing with?
- aurizon 6y ago
  Well, this was set up as a fight with equal resources. The same plane, flown by AI/Human. In a real case you want to set up 'win'scenarios = sure kills. The AI was able to dominate. He seemed to think that a real human in a real plane against the same plane with AI, would draw upon human resources to feel G at 600 knots etc and exceed the ability of the AI to draw on those resources - being an unfeeling machine. In fact, once stripped down AI fighting platforms get made, they will dominate. It will take a design cycle to remove the human life support weight and to remove the cockpit etc,so it can be a 30-50G missile platform - that is what it will be. AI attacked versus AI ground defence missiles with similar AI counter fighters. One can postulate a similar AI blizzard of radar/radio/optical jamming by both sides that will see-saw back and forth as tech develops. We fancy ourselves and look down on Russia, in fact Russia has a capable educational system. It was killed as the USSR by bad economic policies = central planning = a dead horse nobody can ride to victory. Now they are dragged down by the Oligarch tax = oligarchs steal any good idea and company that another Russian creates take it over with a faked shareholders and board meeting = they fill all roles, and drain cash from it. There have been hundreds of these and they are slowly and wurely killing Russia. Look at Putin, poisoning other politicians. /politics off....;)

hpoe 6y ago

Saw an interesting video on the military channel a couple of years back that pointed out something important about these super powerful, super fast, super expensive aircraft. You'd be better off from a cost perspective running a swarm of hundreds of drone strapped with explosives, only one of them needs to get lucky to disable a multi-million dollar plane and the drones themselves can be pretty cheap.

kaiju0 6y ago
Using numbers to overwhelm a weapons system and pop the unkillable machine
- nickff 6y ago
  This is a very old idea, which has never fulfilled its promise; the best modern example may be that of the 'Jeune Ecole'.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Fry: "I heard one time you single-handedly defeated a horde of rampaging somethings in the something something system" Brannigan: "Killbots? A trifle. It was simply a matter of outsmarting them." Fry: "Wow, I never would've thought of that." Brannigan: "You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down. Kif, show them the medal I won."
kcb 6y ago
> You'd be better off from a cost perspective running a swarm of hundreds of drone strapped with explosives, only one of them needs to get lucky to disable a multi-million dollar plane and the drones themselves can be pretty cheap. Have you not just described an anti-air missile?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  No. The anti-air missile doesn't have the "hundreds of" element. Also, drones are far slower than a missile, and even far slower than the airplane they're trying to target.

tomohawk 6y ago

> The fact that in the contest, the AI had perfect information at all times, and rules of engagement were not a factor, are not inconsequential details. I recognize that providing the amount of data and sensor fusion the AI would require to perform at the same level in a real aerial engagement (one that does not take place in cyberspace) is not a small undertaking and still a bit in the future. The rules of engagement discussion could fill up the syllabus for the entire semester of an ethics class, and will always be a touchy subject with regards to AI's involvement in war. This is probably the important bit, and the bit that most needs a human in the loop. Once the decision is made, engage the AI and let it do its thing. Of course, if some regime out there didn't care at all about ROE or human life or killing the wrong people, they could build a bunch of killing machines to take out anything that moves. It would be more efficient.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
I think this is how other species will eventually come upon our world... just a whole bunch of machines fighting each other with the humans long gone.
- DenisM 6y ago
  This book relevant to your interests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible

kaiju0 6y ago

I'm very curious of the gods eye factor of the video game environment vs the real world sensor processing.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

moneytide1 6y ago

I'm assuming combat aircraft are capable of delivering more G's than a human body can handle, though pilots train to sustain brief bouts of high G for quick maneuvering - is this limit factored into to the "AI player" handling? Is it meant to simulate another human pilot or is it human versus the physical limits of a machine?

tempestn 6y ago
Since the human player was in a simulator, the limits of the human body weren't a factor here. As for whether the jets are capable of delivering more Gs than a human body can handle, I'm speculating, but I'm not sure it would make sense for current jets to be designed to do so, at least not by a large margin, since that capacity would be wasted. Future jets without human pilots will certainly be able to do so though, which will make the contest even more lopsided.
dragontamer 6y ago
The last match was apparently with both players (the AI and human) simulating a 9-Gs maneuver. Because it was a simulation, the human didn't black out. Its just a game. Albeit a well simulated game close to dogfighting "reality", but its a game nonetheless.
chiph 6y ago
If I were building an AI commanded aircraft I would have it use every G the airframe could handle. No pilot means fewer maneuvering limitations and an increased chance of victory. An intermediate step could be an AI-assisted aircraft. It might be better at setting up shots, and still work within the physical limitations of the human inside. Something not mentioned is an AI powered plane's ability to more-rapidly change from positive to negative G's (not sure if this is technically called jerk or not). A human has a really tough time making that transition.
- inetknght 6y ago
  There was another discussion a couple months ago [0] which linked to an MIT lecture on Youtube about the F-22 and its design. At 40 minutes in [1], he describes a scenario with an F-15 where the pilot could rip the wings off of the plane. He contrasts that the F-22's software was designed to make the most use of control surfaces and limiters to prevent that. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23588760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23588760 [1]: https://youtu.be/Evhrk5tY-Yo?t=2428 https://youtu.be/Evhrk5tY-Yo?t=2428

ilaksh 6y ago

Its so strange that people are not making the connection between this and killer robots.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
I’m sure China and Russia are making that connection with gusto. Should we?
- ilaksh 6y ago
  I mean to say that those systems are in fact killer robots already. There is nothing special about China and Russia having similar systems. The same military requirements apply everywhere. And just because in the US it is not be popularized as "killer robots" does not mean that it is not already that. Its kind of silly that some people think that the US military has some type of military moral high ground in this case or any. Or that by not explicitly saying "killer robots" that means it is not so.

GhostVII 6y ago

Is there value in having a pilot, just to increase the consequences of shooting down a plane? When Iran shot down a US drone, there was pretty much no real response by the US. If it was a manned plane, there would almost certainly be at least retaliatory strikes, so Iran (and other countries) are going to be much less likely to shoot down a manned F-18 than an unmanned one. So maybe having manned fighters is valuable just to increase the barrier to engagement. And regardless, is there even value in having autonomous fighter jets when we already have advanced missiles? It doesn't matter how good the pilot/AI is if they are just firing missiles from miles away. We already have missiles that can loiter for hours before choosing a target and attacking it (ex. IAI Harpy) - to me that is much more valuable and dangerous than an AI fighter. Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War is a good book to read about it.

deep_etcetera 6y ago
It would be more efficient to use drones but precommit to shooting a soldier back in the US whenever a drone gets shot down.
- totetsu 6y ago
  You could even host some Iranian Revolutionary Guard members on site at the drone facility to do the deed.
  - rimjongun 6y ago
    The levels of efficiency we are reaching on this thread are mind blowing.
- clarus 6y ago
  Morally not possible.
  - _visgean 6y ago
    /r/whoosh

uberdru 6y ago

The real question is whether you want a society without pilots.

valuearb 6y ago
Flight Attendants say: NO!

29athrowaway 6y ago

Dogfights are a mostly extinct scenario.

subsubzero 6y ago

Whats really incredible is the AI company behind these wargames(Heron Systems) only has 25 employees[1]. Which to me seems very small considering the engineering behind making this successful. [1] - https://www.sbir.gov/sbc/heron-systems-incorporated https://www.sbir.gov/sbc/heron-systems-incorporated

ryanmarsh 6y ago

The reason you're seeing this story is not because the Pentagon felt like you would enjoy some candor on a whiz-bang AI thing. No, they're way out in front of this issue. This is part of a prolonged PR campaign to prepare the public for reducing or eliminating human-in-the-loop limitations. A wet dream for systems guys since they were children reading sci-fi. The Pentagon has been using robots to kill robots and other humans since before 9/11. This story has a long arc. We meat bags are the major limitation for machines of war and that limitation will be engineered out.

xvilka 6y ago

To remove the need of pilot completely a lot of still have to be done - making the same AI capable of the full cycle - from taking off to engagement, from the engagement to landing. Combining all these in the same software is harder than making them work independently. Maybe it will be just a few separate AIs. Then the interconnect problem arises.

warmcat 6y ago

What is stopping from using existing remote pilot drone technology and using it for dog fights and other missions that fighter pilots do?

lovegoblin 6y ago
Latency.
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  MIT released open source autonomous drone software that could fly through dense forest at ridiculously fast speeds. In 2015.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  Do you actually know that to be true? Speed-of-light delays would be important for pilots based in Montana flying in Iraq, but not if the remote pilot is in the theatre. And if it's not speed of light, it's a solvable problem.
PeterisP 6y ago
Jamming and ECW. You can't rely on communications being possible in key moments.
- warmcat 6y ago
  Same can be said about drones though right?

greentimer 6y ago

For all we know this kind of AI is much more advanced than we think, even up to AGI. All that needs to be true is that the AI has brain implanted us to make it look like nothing is happening.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

credit_guy 6y ago

Drones can be, and have been jammed, or even captured [1]. You need now, and will continue to need for the foreseeable future pilots in planes. But teams of piloted fighters and drones? That will be the winning combination. And how can a single human command a flock of 20 aircraft? By giving short orders, and letting AI taking care of the rest. The ethics of killing will never be left to AI, but the technicalities of acquiring and prosecuting the target? You bet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

fastball 6y ago
Aren't current drones mostly remote-controlled? In this case the AI is onboard, right? So much lower surface area for being hacked.
- hammock 6y ago
  Goodness. Are you suggesting AI-powered flying killing machines that we can't supervise or control remotely (even temporarily due to jamming) are ok?
  - ummonk 6y ago
    They’re called cruise missiles.
    - hammock 6y ago
      Touche
awb 6y ago
> The ethics of killing will never be left to AI I hope you're right, but what makes you so sure? In a wartime scenario, if a country is short on skilled personnel why wouldn't they release AI combatants if they had the tech? Especially if they're facing a perceived aggressor or defending their territory.

chillacy 6y ago

> Hell, I am only a voting member as far as the flight controls are concerned in the Super Hornet anyways. If I put a control input in that is not aerodynamically sound (i.e. could result in a departure from controlled flight), the flight control system will not move the control surface or will move a different surface to give me the movement I am requesting. Who is flying who? That's a good take on the matter. Computer systems are already a big part of the aircraft, in the near term this could result in some pretty wicked copilot software.

082349872349872 6y ago
Now that AI assist is being openly discussed in the wider anglophone press, I wonder if we'll see a diminution in "unsafe unprofessional" air intercepts? (I don't know what the search terms would be in chinese[1], but "искусственный интеллект су-35" gets plenty of older —at least by HN standards— hits.) [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28905504 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28905504 suggests china has bought while they learn to build. Someone who knows more chinese than I might wish to try "人工智能苏35".

catmistake 6y ago

The US and NATO has inexpensive anti-drone technology. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/903152237/bald-eagle-in-michigan-destroys-wildlife-mapping-drone https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/903152237/bald-eagle-in-michi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYVyj6vf3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYVyj6vf3Y

saithound 6y ago
Unmanned combat air vehicles tend to have net weights in the 30kg-2000kg range. The F/A-18 is closer to 15000kg. We'd need gryphons.

99chrisbard 6y ago

My kind of AI drone~ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417/f-16-drone/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417...

Ericson2314 6y ago

Given how vastly different WWI and WII were from their predecessors, I don't see planning for WWIII being a very useful exercise. The game theory is so vastly open ended, and capabilities of belligerents so great it Bogles the mind. (Oh, and I fail to see how China wouldn't win. Heh.) That just leaves "counter-insurgency" empire building crap which is super inefficient at even the stated goals, and the stated goals are worthless. Therefore I conclude the whole exercise is pointless and a waste of money.

RandyRanderson 6y ago

Three huge issues with this test: 1. The AI had "total situational awareness" (perfect position, direction, velocity of opponent). Even given 360 cameras, radar, etc there is still uncertainty, errors, etc. 2. The human was an expert pilot, not a sim expert (see videos, he was going way too fast several times, not something he'd do in a real plane). A DCS master would likely have done better. 3. The AI wasn't trying to avoid head-ons. With this and the Starcraft2 blink micro "win" I'm just going to these from now on.

e12e 6y ago
> 3. The AI wasn't trying to avoid head-ons. Why should it? Presumably the AI pilot is backed up / remote / not precious - while the human pilot has an inherent value - isn't reckless disregard one benefit of automated systems?
- RandyRanderson 6y ago
  You don't risk an expensive plane with head-ons - that's what missiles are for. This was testing the AI. If real-world AI was going to be deployed in warfare shooting down manned planes, you'd make custom hardware that is smaller, faster and 10-100x cheaper than a f-35.
edelans 6y ago
4. The human pilot doesn't experience any load factor, he can sustain 9Gs doing circles for over a minute

babesh 6y ago

The US military already has drones that are flown remotely. It seems to be a small step to add a dogfighting AI to a plane and just have the remote pilot sic the AI at another plane. The remote pilot just has to reengage after the fighting is over. That’s assuming that they can add the sensors and AI to track the other plane. As the author mentioned, the dogfighting AI seems to counter the real pilot’s moves effectively while maximizing the amount of energy maintained. It seems to have caused the real pilot to overshoot or undershoot while maintaining or gaining energy. The countering also included adjusting aim to hit the real pilot as the real pilot tried to maneuver away. It wasn’t just perfect information or efficient flying.

2rsf 6y ago
Current drones are slow speed, slow maneuverability vehicles. I suppose you can make a drone fighter, but that does not exist yet.
- babesh 6y ago
  The US air force had drone f-16s and used them to test missiles (they shot the missiles at them). https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417/f-16-drone/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a29847417... https://www.boeing.com/defense/support/qf-16/index.page https://www.boeing.com/defense/support/qf-16/index.page
  - 2rsf 6y ago
    > it was noted that with a little extra work the QF-16 could be turned into a combat UAV for dangerous missions like SEAD (suppression of enemy defenses) or attacking ground targets guarded by heavy air defenses. https://www.uasvision.com/2014/06/05/target-qf16-could-become-mq-16-lawn-dart/ https://www.uasvision.com/2014/06/05/target-qf16-could-becom...

cgrealy 6y ago

>>the argument about the death of the dogfight, or that there is no need for within visual range engagements anymore is a tired one. There was a pretty popular movie in the ‘80s about that very argument, so I am not going to rehash it here. Regardless of the actual merits of whether dogfights are a thing any more, I feel like "because Top Gun" is not exactly a sound argument.

fountainofage 6y ago
What's interesting to me - I thought I was a pretty big fan of Top Gun, but now I'm not so sure. I did not pick up there is an argument about whether or not dog fighting still was needed. The only "argument" I recall was the recap of how pilot deaths increased after training stopped, and decreased after training started. But it was a one off history lesson as part of the Top Gun school intro. But the rest or the movie seemed very clearly - yes, the US needs dog fighting to defend its interests across the globe. There seemed to be absolutely no challenging of that idea within Top Gun.
- cgrealy 6y ago
  My main issue with it is that the movie is over 30 years old and the argument in the movie is based on data from a conflict that began 55 years ago. Maybe I'm completely wrong (I'm not a pilot and have no military knowledge), but I feel like things have moved on since then in terms of both the technology and the types of wars fought. Maybe someone more knowledgable than me can answer... when was the last time a US combat aircraft engaged in a real dogfight?
- chrisco255 6y ago
  That was an 80s movie. An all out war with Russia was still a possibility then.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Over the past few years, I've been hoping to run into an 80s soviet movie with heavily armed evil american antagonists. The soviet ideological indoctrination and censorship game must've been strong, because so far everything I've seen either has pirates/hooligans/etc. as antagonists or fails to even have a "man vs. man" plot at all.

poof131 6y ago

Too funny, I went through flight school with Colin. Great guy and glad to see he picked up command but disagree with him on the benefits of BFM and the true value of manned fighter jets over the coming decades. The US military is caught between two wars. One, against opponents who can’t really hit back where fighter jets are overkill. Better off with AC-130s and the like. The other against opponents who can hit back, where the battle will be won or lost in space, cyber, economically, and possibly through nuclear warfare. Even with regards to fighters, the amount of money spent on BFM is really a boondoggle. It’s like spending billions training the infantry to knife fight. It’s not Vietnam and the last gunfighter with regards to missiles and targeting. Is not the AIM-9X targeting AI itself? A great book that rings more true than ever talks about the obsolescence of weapons systems. I believe it was Freedman[1] A key thesis is that as a predominant weapon system becomes more vulnerable, it becomes more expensive, as it’s burdened with more defensive measures to survive from cheaper more expendable systems. In World War 2 the canonical example was the battle ship and the aircraft. Now it’s the fighter jet and the missile (or drone) etc. Just look at the ridiculous state of the JSF. Manned missile trucks are valuable for countering electronic attack, but not dogfighting. Still, practice dogfighting is one of the most fun things you can do, too bad it hasn’t really been applicable since Vietnam. This post from the other day reminded me how fun it is and seems like a great fit for VR.[2] Onward last Samurais! Just try not to spend all the taxpayers money on the way out. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Future-War-History-Lawrence-Freedman-ebook/dp/B01JZ2QLFQ/ https://www.amazon.com/Future-War-History-Lawrence-Freedman-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24255191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24255191

cryptonector 6y ago
Are manned missile trucks even valuable for countering electronic attack? I'm thinking "no". A missile truck can definitely be AI'ed or controlled remotely. Perhaps only CAS can't be made unmanned. Cost is a huge problem. We now have unmanned carrier launched refueling trucks that I bet are incredibly cheap. Make them a tad bigger, put missiles in them, and you have a super cheap replacement for the F-35. The F-35 can stick around in small numbers for when you really need a human, if you really need a human in the cockpit. Cost has to drive us to this.

diskmuncher 6y ago

The setup of the game is simply unfair for a comparison between AI and human. If you want to keep the perfect data link between the simulator's outputs and the AI player computer, then at least let the human play by watching the (God's eye) display with the aircraft sprites sporting those kill-point spears and ditch the HUD. The objective would simply be to touch the enemy aircraft with that spear. The HUD is cool and all. But how do I know where the enemy is if it is outside of the HUD's field? Think about how the AI knew. :) And while we are at this, maybe just invite a young gamer instead of a real pilot.

antonvs 6y ago

They don't select fighter pilots for their writing or reasoning skills, and it shows in this article. There doesn't appear to be anything worth paying attention to here.