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The real reason why states are pouring billions into AI isn't to generate silly emoji, help people rewrite their emails, or make a web app without learning how
by gyomu 2y ago
The real reason why states are pouring billions into AI isn't to generate silly emoji, help people rewrite their emails, or make a web app without learning how to code.
It's for autonomous drone warfare.
Invading a neighboring nation doesn't seem too appealing if it means sending tens/hundreds of thousands of your young people (a resource that's getting scarcer and scarcer most everywhere in the world) to the meat grinder. Millions of drones though...
- empressplay 2y agoThis. The Chinese AI is called DeepSeek FFS -- think about that one for a minute.
- potatoman22 2y agoI've thought about it and don't understand what you're saying
- Philpax 2y agoI assume the implication is that they'll build AI capable of automated drone surveillance. Which is silly, because other Chinese companies have already done that, and America is pioneering it (cf Anduril)
- bee_rider 2y agoMaybe the comment is implying something along the lines of seeking missiles or seek and destroy? I don’t think it is very obvious though.
- colordrops 2y agoOnline propaganda is insanely powerful too. Not sure if many noticed, but the English put out by Chinese teams is often perfect these days.
- tw1984 2y agobecause there is something called AI - you put your crap into it and ask the AI to do all corrections and improvements for you. it is also free.
- eastbound 2y agoOnline propaganda seems to have been using AI since circa 2020. There’s no way all of those comments were natural, particularly the pro-US ones.
- inemesitaffia 2y agoElgin AFB and Reddit
- immibis 2y agoOnline propaganda since 2014ish led the US to its current state, which is incredible. It turns out you can destroy a country with nothing more than words.
- suraci 2y ago> Online propaganda is insanely powerful too. > Not sure if many noticed, but the English put out by Chinese teams is often perfect these days how are these two sentences connected? I have learnt English for over 10 years, and so have most Chinese students in the past 20 years. This is a part of the Chinese education system. For every Chinese student in top universities, there's a 99.99% chance that he/she is very good at English. how is this connected to "Online propaganda is insanely powerful too" what's the context?
- ninetyninenine 2y agoBro ai via programming with people is already good enough to fight wars with drones in the air. You don’t even need LLMs or machine learning black boxes. Basically the reason is because there’s so little noise in the air. If it’s black and metal and flying and doesn’t match the iff signal than simple “if then” logic can verify it’s a bogey.
- dmix 2y agoThis is partly true, Automated object detection already exists. If LLMs haven't fundamentally shifted Ukraine war yet then it's plausible it has limited value in progressing drone warfare. I disagree you can simply automate it via IFF though... basically because IFF is easy grounds for counter drone attacks. Establishing IFF just makes your enemies job easier unless you have heavy anti drone tech which no country does yet. Automating "this person holding a gun in a given GPS grid is hopefully not holding a stick and is hopefully not a friendly/civilian... and calculate odds they should be executed" is not something easily done by a drone. Especially when there's electronic warfare and drones don't have the luxury of spending lots of time looking. In Ukraine for example people wear 50 different uniforms because they buy them on the internet or come from random countries. And they carry similar AK rifles. What's an LLM going to do? Kill random people with ~50% accuracy using a very finite supply of drones? Or just have humans fly them from the rear.
- blitzar 2y agoBuilding 1000's of drones capable of taking out armoured vehicles from disposable commodity parts is more important than a 4% improved detection rate of hotdogs.
- sebazzz 2y agoI've only seen billions be poured in LLMs and with those you're not going to control your drones.
- immibis 2y agoThose are to identify who should be targeted with drones.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoSurely it'd be a lot more cost-effective to train up people to fly drones remotely, or is the issue more that they can't secure the communications to control them remotely?
- lykahb 2y agoI think that the autonomous drone warfare is more of a near-term milestone than the goal. The goal itself seems to be AGI and the advances in the basic research and engineering that it brings.
- roncesvalles 2y ago>Invading a neighboring nation doesn't seem too appealing if it means sending tens/hundreds of thousands of your young people (a resource that's getting scarcer and scarcer most everywhere in the world) to the meat grinder. Millions of drones though... Sorry but this is alarmist bullshit. What keeps countries from going to war is not the cost in soldiers; it's the cost of retaliation on its home soil. Indeed, countries that don't anticipate the enemy to meaningfully retaliate on its civilians are quite trigger-happy to engage in various small wars around the world.