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There is such a blurry line for autonomous munitions. militaries used dumb imprecise munitions for decades - then precision weapons. A2A missiles used to lock

by lumost 4y ago

There is such a blurry line for autonomous munitions. militaries used dumb imprecise munitions for decades - then precision weapons. A2A missiles used to lock on radar signature leading to huge risks related to accidentally shooting airliners/friendly craft. Now antiship missiles dynamically select their target over 300km away to maximize the chance of hitting a big ship. During the war on terror, ML models would decide which phone to blow up. We’re probably going to see ai driven target selection and prioritization for fire control within the next few months of the Ukraine war. The US’s new Rapid dragon program almost demands ai control of target selection and flight trajectories. Where do you draw the line? What would an appropriate agreement look like?

stareatgoats 4y ago
> Where do you draw the line? What would an appropriate agreement look like? Good questions. I'm not sure, but that line needs to be drawn somewhere. Thousands of experts should be pouring over questions like these, and likely will.
- JieJie 4y ago
  Here's an interview[0] with Lauren Khan from the Council on Foreign Relations[1] who is indeed pouring over those questions. [0]https://youtu.be/CDoIPpcwnCE https://youtu.be/CDoIPpcwnCE [1]https://www.cfr.org/expert/lauren-kahn https://www.cfr.org/expert/lauren-kahn
- milesward 4y ago
  Who pays for those experts, and what are their incentives?
neatze 4y ago
The line already drawn, no indiscriminate killings of civilians, all this technology only minimizes civilian suffering, furthermore it is more humane to use terminators instead of 20 years olds clearing buildings and autonomous tanks/tracks driving though IEDs filled streets. War is deeply in human nature, it is not going away, question is; how to make it more humane and minimize indiscriminate killings and sufferings in most cases poorest populations on earth.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "The line already drawn, no indiscriminate killings of civilian" In modern warfare, civilians have always been the main casualties of war. Whether this really counts as "indiscriminate" is for war lawyers to argue over, but the fact remains that the civilian toll far exceeds the military toll, and for the victims and their families it matters little whether their deaths were "justified" to some lawyer or politician. As technology advances, more and more power is going to be concentrated in the hands of individuals, many of whom won't be bothered by niceties such as the Geneva convention, and will target those they hate, be they civilian or military. High tech weapons will only make this easier. We are headed for a very dark time.
  - neatze 4y ago
    Are you arguing that war without modern technology had less civilian casualties ?
    - RandomLensman 4y ago
      What are your measures? How do you compare WWI and WWII, for example?
      - neatze 4y ago
        It is really hard, if not impossible to compare civilian causalities directly effected by weapon systems, no two wars are same, not all wars culminated within urban area(s), parties in conflict use different weapons systems, and engagement rules, etc. For example, hellfire missile is more effective and substantially less destructive then carpet bombing few cities blocks, furthermore video feeds from drones provide some accountability.
  - glitchc 4y ago
    The modern era has dramatically reduced civilian casualties compared previous generations. Moreover the decline is in absolute terms, despite the fact that global population has been increasing in the same time frame. Precision munitions contribute heavily to this reduction. All in all, war has become a lot safer for the typical civilian.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
drawnwren 4y ago
This comment appears to be getting upvotes, so I am going to jump in and say that it is very clear to anyone who knows that this commenter has no idea how AI is being used in the military or how military targeting works in the West. These things are generally classified, but algorithms are nowhere close to being considered decision-capable and human-in-the-loop targeting will be the norm for quite some time. Even next generation systems that are being considered are still human queued and the AI comes in during the engagement step. If you look at the stages of the F3EA cycle (Find, Fix, Finish, Analyze) there is no single step which is currently offloaded to an algorithm.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I don't know the first thing about autonomous weapons systems, but nothing the GP said sounds technically infeasible. And what does the game theory look like once one party has AI that can make decisions without humans? Wouldn't that be a huge "advantage" in combat?
- timschmidt 4y ago
  "SKYNET is a program by the U.S. National Security Agency that performs machine learning analysis on communications data to extract information about possible terror suspects. The tool is used to identify targets, such as al-Qaeda couriers, who move between GSM cellular networks. Specifically, mobile usage patterns such as swapping SIM cards within phones that have the same ESN, MEID or IMEI number are deemed indicative of covert activities.[1][2] Like many other security programs, the SKYNET program uses graphs that consist of a set of nodes and edges to visually represent social networks.[3] The tool also uses classification techniques like random forest analysis. Because the data set includes a very large proportion of true negatives and a small training set, there is a risk of overfitting.[1] Bruce Schneier argues that a false positive rate of 0.008% would be low for commercial applications where "if Google makes a mistake, people see an ad for a car they don't want to buy" but "if the government makes a mistake, they kill innocents."[1] The SKYNET project was linked with drone systems, thus creating the potential for false-positives to lead to deaths.[1][5]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program)
- 4y ago

by lumost 4y ago

stareatgoats 4y ago

> Where do you draw the line? What would an appropriate agreement look like? Good questions. I'm not sure, but that line needs to be drawn somewhere. Thousands of experts should be pouring over questions like these, and likely will.

JieJie 4y ago
Here's an interview[0] with Lauren Khan from the Council on Foreign Relations[1] who is indeed pouring over those questions. [0]https://youtu.be/CDoIPpcwnCE https://youtu.be/CDoIPpcwnCE [1]https://www.cfr.org/expert/lauren-kahn https://www.cfr.org/expert/lauren-kahn
milesward 4y ago
Who pays for those experts, and what are their incentives?

neatze 4y ago

The line already drawn, no indiscriminate killings of civilians, all this technology only minimizes civilian suffering, furthermore it is more humane to use terminators instead of 20 years olds clearing buildings and autonomous tanks/tracks driving though IEDs filled streets. War is deeply in human nature, it is not going away, question is; how to make it more humane and minimize indiscriminate killings and sufferings in most cases poorest populations on earth.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"The line already drawn, no indiscriminate killings of civilian" In modern warfare, civilians have always been the main casualties of war. Whether this really counts as "indiscriminate" is for war lawyers to argue over, but the fact remains that the civilian toll far exceeds the military toll, and for the victims and their families it matters little whether their deaths were "justified" to some lawyer or politician. As technology advances, more and more power is going to be concentrated in the hands of individuals, many of whom won't be bothered by niceties such as the Geneva convention, and will target those they hate, be they civilian or military. High tech weapons will only make this easier. We are headed for a very dark time.
- neatze 4y ago
  Are you arguing that war without modern technology had less civilian casualties ?
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    What are your measures? How do you compare WWI and WWII, for example?
    - neatze 4y ago
      It is really hard, if not impossible to compare civilian causalities directly effected by weapon systems, no two wars are same, not all wars culminated within urban area(s), parties in conflict use different weapons systems, and engagement rules, etc. For example, hellfire missile is more effective and substantially less destructive then carpet bombing few cities blocks, furthermore video feeds from drones provide some accountability.
- glitchc 4y ago
  The modern era has dramatically reduced civilian casualties compared previous generations. Moreover the decline is in absolute terms, despite the fact that global population has been increasing in the same time frame. Precision munitions contribute heavily to this reduction. All in all, war has become a lot safer for the typical civilian.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

drawnwren 4y ago

This comment appears to be getting upvotes, so I am going to jump in and say that it is very clear to anyone who knows that this commenter has no idea how AI is being used in the military or how military targeting works in the West. These things are generally classified, but algorithms are nowhere close to being considered decision-capable and human-in-the-loop targeting will be the norm for quite some time. Even next generation systems that are being considered are still human queued and the AI comes in during the engagement step. If you look at the stages of the F3EA cycle (Find, Fix, Finish, Analyze) there is no single step which is currently offloaded to an algorithm.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I don't know the first thing about autonomous weapons systems, but nothing the GP said sounds technically infeasible. And what does the game theory look like once one party has AI that can make decisions without humans? Wouldn't that be a huge "advantage" in combat?
timschmidt 4y ago
"SKYNET is a program by the U.S. National Security Agency that performs machine learning analysis on communications data to extract information about possible terror suspects. The tool is used to identify targets, such as al-Qaeda couriers, who move between GSM cellular networks. Specifically, mobile usage patterns such as swapping SIM cards within phones that have the same ESN, MEID or IMEI number are deemed indicative of covert activities.[1][2] Like many other security programs, the SKYNET program uses graphs that consist of a set of nodes and edges to visually represent social networks.[3] The tool also uses classification techniques like random forest analysis. Because the data set includes a very large proportion of true negatives and a small training set, there is a risk of overfitting.[1] Bruce Schneier argues that a false positive rate of 0.008% would be low for commercial applications where "if Google makes a mistake, people see an ad for a car they don't want to buy" but "if the government makes a mistake, they kill innocents."[1] The SKYNET project was linked with drone systems, thus creating the potential for false-positives to lead to deaths.[1][5]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program)
4y ago