4 ms·

The interesting (and sinister) thing to consider is how wild this will look if fully built out. We're not just talking about some machine intelligence shuffling

The interesting (and sinister) thing to consider is how wild this will look if fully built out. We're not just talking about some machine intelligence shuffling troops around in lieu of a general. The advantage of a computer is its vision: it can see the "playing field," the reality it's fighting in, much more broadly and deeply than a human can. It can hold more things in its mind at once. AI warfare isn't computers flying some drones or robotic tanks. AI warfare probably looks like a bunch of small, odd occurrences as both sides probe each other's weaknesses in economics, infrastructure and politics, circling each other like two knife fighters. A bunch of weird, disjointed bursts of propaganda crop up across various media channels, fragmented and often seemingly incoherent, but perfectly targeted. Small, isolated incidents of problems at important institutions start cropping up, shutting them down for weeks or months: Hospitals, minor government agencies, oil pipelines, food processing. Never enough to look like a coherent attack. Knife jabs and dodges, the fighters probing, learning, a/b testing. And then one day it isn't a test anymore. The real strike comes. It isn't a nuke or an invasion. There's no need. Those things are as outdated as tying sharp stones to sticks. The AI knows just where to hit, in just the right way, and like a Vulcan death grip one pinch sets the whole system collapsing on itself. It will take humans a decade to even fully understand what happened. If they have that luxury. The atom bomb changed warfare via incomprehensible destruction. AI will change warfare via incomprehensible strategy.

viciousvoxel 5y ago
I would read this novel.
Retric 5y ago
Thinking of AI like this is completely misunderstanding complexity. AI isn’t going to be able to predict the weather 2 weeks from now let alone society at the level your suggesting. It’s going to use the same old tools at best significantly more efficiently.
AbrahamParangi 5y ago
Watching superhuman AI play games doesn’t look like this. They just look like people that are really stupid in some ways and really good in others.
- gurkendoktor 5y ago
  I suspect that this is because games have fixed rules: you can't use a hammer to smash the enemy's chess king. Reality is a lot more flexible.
  - allportmi 5y ago
    Fixed rules are the reason the AIs do well in games. You can’t train an algorithm to think outside the box like that, because the box is how it’s trained. Since we cannot meaningfully codify, much less rapidly simulate, the potential actions and real consequences in this supposed global all-fronts war, we cannot train an algorithm on it.
handrous 5y ago
My expectation is that if it turns out to be practically possible and significantly beneficial to turn over lots of strategic military and business decision making over to AI, it soon won't be a choice not to, thanks to competition. I think AI rule of much of our top-level, super-important decision making is either a dead-end that will never work or inevitable and something we won't have the practical choice to avoid (barring, say, a real and effective world government) with little room for anything in between. And if it pans out, I expect it to be much as you wrote: the decisions will seem nonsensical much of the time, but those who second-guess the AI will be at a disadvantage against those who do not.
bargle0 5y ago
Sometimes I feel like it's already happened.
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
I don't think narrow AI is really capable of much of that. On the other hand if strong/general AI pops into existence we're at a singularity point anyway.
wcarss 5y ago
That's an interesting idea about a type of AI that we do not have yet. Attributing magical pattern-finding expert-beating behaviour to AI is common among those who do not know much about it or how it works, or who haven't used it to solve problems. I don't want to guess at your experience using AI tools to solve problems (maybe you have tons!), but from my own modest experience, 'AI' is not very good at the things you are painting a picture about. AI in most contexts today is not a way to replace a scarce expensive human expert with a cheap multipliable mechanical expert, let alone a cheap multipliable mechanical super-expert. It is a way to replace a scarce expensive human expert with a cheap multipliable mechanical 10 year old. Anyone can get AI can do what a thousand reasonably trained 10 year olds can do, but it can not out-see or out-intuition most experts at most tasks, especially many-factor soft tasks, because humans can quickly sort through what to pay attention to among many diverse signal types. An expert comedian is still a lot better at looking at, say, a tag cloud and coming up with a great joke than GPT-3 is. In some tasks, like chess or go, AI can evaluate many many paths and store the results and train on the specific, measurable outcomes. This is valuable to it, and allows it to outpace experts in these domains. It may apply to many other domains in the future. Is propaganda like those domains? Are exposed networks like those domains? Is trading bitcoin like those domains? I agree that it may be possible for AI to do very surprising, clever things in the future -- it maybe even is likely that it will. But today, and for the near future, what you're discussing is very far into the realm of fun science fiction.
mamcx 5y ago
You know what could be actually bad? The AI think that could do as well as you described...
AnonymousPlanet 5y ago
This sounds a lot like the Chinese idea of unrestricted warfare [1] but conducted by AI. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare
shoto_io 5y ago
This reads really nicely. It’s a nice story. But for me it breaks at a crucial point: how exactly will a strike look like that is way more sophisticated than a nuke or an invasion? I think your comment is giving AI a life of its own. Whereas I believe that AI is just a continuation of what we have seen for the past 70 years: Computational power will increasingly aid existing attack vectors. The nuclear strike will be better planned. The invasion much more effective. Through better computer programs, that some happen to call AI these days.
mirker 5y ago
For what it’s worth, gameplay AI in real time strategy games beats humans by performing more actions per minute than humanly possible. You can find Starcraft 2 AI that perfectly controls every unit while a human can only dedicate time to controlling a few groups of units. Nothing intelligent occurs; the human loses because they simply fall behind.
malux85 5y ago
Yeah, the consequence of large intelligence differentials in war is that the lower intelligence doesnt even know they are at war It's not that they don't know the rules, it's that they don't even know they are playing.
sklearncowboy 5y ago
Instead of "AI Warfare" what if we come back to reality and say machine learning driven warfare? It is a lot of nothing. You have to conflate science fiction with reality because reality is a non-story here. I worry we have become dangerously complacent or deluded that nuclear war is impossible. I mean if you read anything about the early 60s you almost have to conclude we just got lucky. So many chances for people to do something stupid. Imagine if military brass in the early 60s thought the Soviets had developed science fiction "AI" the way people view "AI" today? Defcon 1 no doubt.
Aditya_Garg 5y ago
If such an AI were out there, somebody would’ve already made a trillion dollars on the stock market. If (when) that level of AI becomes feasible, it’s going to be created in the private sector, and they’re not going to be interested in toppling nations. Although they’re actions with that AI could very well lead to the same effect.

viciousvoxel 5y ago

I would read this novel.

Retric 5y ago

Thinking of AI like this is completely misunderstanding complexity. AI isn’t going to be able to predict the weather 2 weeks from now let alone society at the level your suggesting. It’s going to use the same old tools at best significantly more efficiently.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago

Watching superhuman AI play games doesn’t look like this. They just look like people that are really stupid in some ways and really good in others.

gurkendoktor 5y ago
I suspect that this is because games have fixed rules: you can't use a hammer to smash the enemy's chess king. Reality is a lot more flexible.
- allportmi 5y ago
  Fixed rules are the reason the AIs do well in games. You can’t train an algorithm to think outside the box like that, because the box is how it’s trained. Since we cannot meaningfully codify, much less rapidly simulate, the potential actions and real consequences in this supposed global all-fronts war, we cannot train an algorithm on it.

handrous 5y ago

My expectation is that if it turns out to be practically possible and significantly beneficial to turn over lots of strategic military and business decision making over to AI, it soon won't be a choice not to, thanks to competition. I think AI rule of much of our top-level, super-important decision making is either a dead-end that will never work or inevitable and something we won't have the practical choice to avoid (barring, say, a real and effective world government) with little room for anything in between. And if it pans out, I expect it to be much as you wrote: the decisions will seem nonsensical much of the time, but those who second-guess the AI will be at a disadvantage against those who do not.

bargle0 5y ago

Sometimes I feel like it's already happened.

only_as_i_fall 5y ago

I don't think narrow AI is really capable of much of that. On the other hand if strong/general AI pops into existence we're at a singularity point anyway.

wcarss 5y ago

That's an interesting idea about a type of AI that we do not have yet. Attributing magical pattern-finding expert-beating behaviour to AI is common among those who do not know much about it or how it works, or who haven't used it to solve problems. I don't want to guess at your experience using AI tools to solve problems (maybe you have tons!), but from my own modest experience, 'AI' is not very good at the things you are painting a picture about. AI in most contexts today is not a way to replace a scarce expensive human expert with a cheap multipliable mechanical expert, let alone a cheap multipliable mechanical super-expert. It is a way to replace a scarce expensive human expert with a cheap multipliable mechanical 10 year old. Anyone can get AI can do what a thousand reasonably trained 10 year olds can do, but it can not out-see or out-intuition most experts at most tasks, especially many-factor soft tasks, because humans can quickly sort through what to pay attention to among many diverse signal types. An expert comedian is still a lot better at looking at, say, a tag cloud and coming up with a great joke than GPT-3 is. In some tasks, like chess or go, AI can evaluate many many paths and store the results and train on the specific, measurable outcomes. This is valuable to it, and allows it to outpace experts in these domains. It may apply to many other domains in the future. Is propaganda like those domains? Are exposed networks like those domains? Is trading bitcoin like those domains? I agree that it may be possible for AI to do very surprising, clever things in the future -- it maybe even is likely that it will. But today, and for the near future, what you're discussing is very far into the realm of fun science fiction.

mamcx 5y ago

You know what could be actually bad? The AI think that could do as well as you described...

AnonymousPlanet 5y ago

This sounds a lot like the Chinese idea of unrestricted warfare [1] but conducted by AI. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

shoto_io 5y ago

This reads really nicely. It’s a nice story. But for me it breaks at a crucial point: how exactly will a strike look like that is way more sophisticated than a nuke or an invasion? I think your comment is giving AI a life of its own. Whereas I believe that AI is just a continuation of what we have seen for the past 70 years: Computational power will increasingly aid existing attack vectors. The nuclear strike will be better planned. The invasion much more effective. Through better computer programs, that some happen to call AI these days.

mirker 5y ago

For what it’s worth, gameplay AI in real time strategy games beats humans by performing more actions per minute than humanly possible. You can find Starcraft 2 AI that perfectly controls every unit while a human can only dedicate time to controlling a few groups of units. Nothing intelligent occurs; the human loses because they simply fall behind.

malux85 5y ago

Yeah, the consequence of large intelligence differentials in war is that the lower intelligence doesnt even know they are at war It's not that they don't know the rules, it's that they don't even know they are playing.

sklearncowboy 5y ago

Instead of "AI Warfare" what if we come back to reality and say machine learning driven warfare? It is a lot of nothing. You have to conflate science fiction with reality because reality is a non-story here. I worry we have become dangerously complacent or deluded that nuclear war is impossible. I mean if you read anything about the early 60s you almost have to conclude we just got lucky. So many chances for people to do something stupid. Imagine if military brass in the early 60s thought the Soviets had developed science fiction "AI" the way people view "AI" today? Defcon 1 no doubt.

Aditya_Garg 5y ago

If such an AI were out there, somebody would’ve already made a trillion dollars on the stock market. If (when) that level of AI becomes feasible, it’s going to be created in the private sector, and they’re not going to be interested in toppling nations. Although they’re actions with that AI could very well lead to the same effect.