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When I think war AI, I am thinking 3 levels: the global coordinating AI on a battle field, the AIs of a swarm of "killer robots"/weapons (should not work with g

When I think war AI, I am thinking 3 levels: the global coordinating AI on a battle field, the AIs of a swarm of "killer robots"/weapons (should not work with good EM jamming), the embedded AI in each "killer robot"/weapon with a local non-jammable tactical "vision" (should not be very interesting due to the very limited "size" of an "embeddable" AI). I am a dota2 player, and I very well remember E.Musk openAI: a team of 5 independent AIs with each a different set of skills based on the hero... and they had to slow them down and make them inaccurate... In the end, I cannot see clearly where an AI would pertinently fit in a battle. Stategic assistance?

sorokod 4y ago
Each of the AIs you mentioned may have a dedicated counter AI fielded by the opponent.
- stevenhuang 4y ago
  Notably https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00241 https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00241 > We attack the state-of-the-art Go-playing AI system, KataGo, by training adversarial policies that play against frozen KataGo victims. Our attack achieves a >99% win rate when KataGo uses no tree-search, and a >77% win rate when KataGo uses enough search to be superhuman. Notably, our adversaries do not win by learning to play Go better than KataGo -- in fact, our adversaries are easily beaten by human amateurs. Instead, our adversaries win by tricking KataGo into making serious blunders. Our results demonstrate that even superhuman AI systems may harbor surprising failure modes
  - sorokod 4y ago
    The only reason we call those failure modes surprising is that we anthropomorphise the AI. Entirely understanble, we all do it and it may become a serious issue.
credit_guy 4y ago
> I cannot see clearly where an AI would pertinently fit in a battle Here's a scenario: one F-35 together with about two dozen loyal wingman drones [1]. The drones stay within line of sight of the F-35, so they are immune to electronic warfare of the kind that lead to the capture of a US drone by Iran in 2011 [2]. The F-35 pilot assigns the drones high-level missions, like take care of the incoming bogeys in the north-east sector. The drones then use AI to coordinate their actions in an optimal way and carry out the mission. Some of the drones are lost. No biggie. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-28_Ghost_Bat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-28_Ghost_Bat [2] 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...
- sylware 4y ago
  I cannot understand the usage of combat planes nowdays: unless in a unbalanced conflict, all combat planes are sitting ducks with modern air-ground missiles. No to mention cruise missiles should be able to do the same if it is the "delivery" some payload somewhere. It is the same for tanks. Maybe that's where AI could be "usefull", way more efficient autonomous guidance systems for all those missiles, actually scary efficient.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > It is the same for tanks. And helicopters, and trucks, and humvees, and missiles themselves, and drones, and humans... We have very good and usually very cheap (compared to the target's price) ways to destroy things. Looks like planes and tanks are still useful, Ukraine wouldn't ask for them otherwise
    - sylware 4y ago
      That would means they are super omega sure that putin's regime invaders are very limited in their capacity to destroy combat aircrafts and tanks, basically have very low tech missiles and/or very little high tech missiles. It seems putin's regime is "making" room in it prisons sending political dissidents and "unwanted" people to be slaughtered by the ukrainian army. Wild guess, the USA intelligence services know and have green-lighted the usage of combat aircrafts/tanks to friendly countries. Hope it is not the same type of intelligence used for the weapons of mass destruction in irak... ahem...
revolvingocelot 4y ago
What matters is an AI's ability to do things that human combatants cannot, and that which human opponents cannot effectively counter. As you refer to videogame AI, think back to the Berkeley Overmind, a Starcraft 1 Zerg AI that beat seasoned humans by the simple expedient of being able to shuffle around mutalisks [0] in such a way that no human micromanagement could efficiently kill any. The only realistic way to defeat the Berkeley Overmind, as I recall the decade-old coverage, was to attack the AI's base before it could build the tech necessary to spawn mutalisks. [0] Mutalisks are a Zerg air unit whose attack bounces from enemy to enemy. Like all Zerg units, it regenerates health gradually, so the AI's chief tactic of moving even slightly damaged units to the back of the battlegroup allowed surprising compounding benefits.
- jpitz 4y ago
  I am cursing you right now because it is occurred to me that I have to go home and install starcraft and play. There goes my weekend.

sorokod 4y ago

Each of the AIs you mentioned may have a dedicated counter AI fielded by the opponent.

stevenhuang 4y ago
Notably https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00241 https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00241 > We attack the state-of-the-art Go-playing AI system, KataGo, by training adversarial policies that play against frozen KataGo victims. Our attack achieves a >99% win rate when KataGo uses no tree-search, and a >77% win rate when KataGo uses enough search to be superhuman. Notably, our adversaries do not win by learning to play Go better than KataGo -- in fact, our adversaries are easily beaten by human amateurs. Instead, our adversaries win by tricking KataGo into making serious blunders. Our results demonstrate that even superhuman AI systems may harbor surprising failure modes
- sorokod 4y ago
  The only reason we call those failure modes surprising is that we anthropomorphise the AI. Entirely understanble, we all do it and it may become a serious issue.

credit_guy 4y ago

> I cannot see clearly where an AI would pertinently fit in a battle Here's a scenario: one F-35 together with about two dozen loyal wingman drones [1]. The drones stay within line of sight of the F-35, so they are immune to electronic warfare of the kind that lead to the capture of a US drone by Iran in 2011 [2]. The F-35 pilot assigns the drones high-level missions, like take care of the incoming bogeys in the north-east sector. The drones then use AI to coordinate their actions in an optimal way and carry out the mission. Some of the drones are lost. No biggie. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-28_Ghost_Bat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-28_Ghost_Bat [2] 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...

sylware 4y ago
I cannot understand the usage of combat planes nowdays: unless in a unbalanced conflict, all combat planes are sitting ducks with modern air-ground missiles. No to mention cruise missiles should be able to do the same if it is the "delivery" some payload somewhere. It is the same for tanks. Maybe that's where AI could be "usefull", way more efficient autonomous guidance systems for all those missiles, actually scary efficient.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > It is the same for tanks. And helicopters, and trucks, and humvees, and missiles themselves, and drones, and humans... We have very good and usually very cheap (compared to the target's price) ways to destroy things. Looks like planes and tanks are still useful, Ukraine wouldn't ask for them otherwise
  - sylware 4y ago
    That would means they are super omega sure that putin's regime invaders are very limited in their capacity to destroy combat aircrafts and tanks, basically have very low tech missiles and/or very little high tech missiles. It seems putin's regime is "making" room in it prisons sending political dissidents and "unwanted" people to be slaughtered by the ukrainian army. Wild guess, the USA intelligence services know and have green-lighted the usage of combat aircrafts/tanks to friendly countries. Hope it is not the same type of intelligence used for the weapons of mass destruction in irak... ahem...

revolvingocelot 4y ago

What matters is an AI's ability to do things that human combatants cannot, and that which human opponents cannot effectively counter. As you refer to videogame AI, think back to the Berkeley Overmind, a Starcraft 1 Zerg AI that beat seasoned humans by the simple expedient of being able to shuffle around mutalisks [0] in such a way that no human micromanagement could efficiently kill any. The only realistic way to defeat the Berkeley Overmind, as I recall the decade-old coverage, was to attack the AI's base before it could build the tech necessary to spawn mutalisks. [0] Mutalisks are a Zerg air unit whose attack bounces from enemy to enemy. Like all Zerg units, it regenerates health gradually, so the AI's chief tactic of moving even slightly damaged units to the back of the battlegroup allowed surprising compounding benefits.

jpitz 4y ago
I am cursing you right now because it is occurred to me that I have to go home and install starcraft and play. There goes my weekend.