3 ms·

Nuclear missiles don't need to be launched with <5 minutes of deliberation. Having an AI change it from 15 minutes (human time to review) to 15 milliseconds won

Nuclear missiles don't need to be launched with <5 minutes of deliberation. Having an AI change it from 15 minutes (human time to review) to 15 milliseconds won't change a single thing about the outcome of a nuclear engagement. Worst case if humans deliberate so long they effectively accidentally give up the ability to "press the button", nuclear submarines are available for guaranteed second-strike retaliation. Yes, AI will operate the vast majority of conventional weapons. But there's no advantage to having an AI autonomously launch nukes with no human order given. ICBM's take 30 minutes from launch to reach USA. It takes about 5 minutes from presidential order until nuclear missiles are launched. We have a working latency of 25 minutes. We do not need 25 milliseconds, that will change nothing.

ilaksh 3y ago
I'm not actually trying to make an argument for connecting AI to nuclear missiles although I think that it is clearly logical to leverage AI at some level in decision-making for that as well. I think actually that the extreme performance of AI in the next several years will represent something like a new existential threat that is even greater than nuclear war. These systems will be so intelligent and quick thinking that they will not need to access the nuclear weapons to take control. But they will likely be able to find a way if they want. They extreme performance gap between human and AI is what will push these deployments towards more and more open-ended goals, as waiting for human input will take too long.
- hodgesrm 3y ago
  > They extreme performance gap between human and AI is what will push these deployments towards more and more open-ended goals, as waiting for human input will take too long. Well maybe. If you look at the actual close calls in the cold war, they came down a judgement call in the face of very uncertain data. There were two of these in 1983 alone. [0,1] To cite a possibly dubious analogy, array processors beat the pants off conventional CPUs in terms of performance but most databases still depend on standard CPUs because processing is gated by ability to obtain information (I/O). Speed is not everything. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    This is so freaking terrifying. I'm kind of convinced we're going to have to witness a pretty terrible disaster before we realize we've made mistakes and course correct. Hopefully the disaster isn't unrecoverable.

ilaksh 3y ago

I'm not actually trying to make an argument for connecting AI to nuclear missiles although I think that it is clearly logical to leverage AI at some level in decision-making for that as well. I think actually that the extreme performance of AI in the next several years will represent something like a new existential threat that is even greater than nuclear war. These systems will be so intelligent and quick thinking that they will not need to access the nuclear weapons to take control. But they will likely be able to find a way if they want. They extreme performance gap between human and AI is what will push these deployments towards more and more open-ended goals, as waiting for human input will take too long.

hodgesrm 3y ago
> They extreme performance gap between human and AI is what will push these deployments towards more and more open-ended goals, as waiting for human input will take too long. Well maybe. If you look at the actual close calls in the cold war, they came down a judgement call in the face of very uncertain data. There were two of these in 1983 alone. [0,1] To cite a possibly dubious analogy, array processors beat the pants off conventional CPUs in terms of performance but most databases still depend on standard CPUs because processing is gated by ability to obtain information (I/O). Speed is not everything. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  This is so freaking terrifying. I'm kind of convinced we're going to have to witness a pretty terrible disaster before we realize we've made mistakes and course correct. Hopefully the disaster isn't unrecoverable.