The Pentagon Is Accelerating AI and Autonomous Technology America’s military leaders are racing to deploy thousands of autonomous weapons and an AI-powered air monitoring system for Washington D.C.

  • lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 years ago

    Maybe can we take a step back and ask whether we need thousands of AI defense bots at all? Or are we past that point?

    • Zippy@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I don’t like it but I think we do. China and Russia will certainly have them and they will get ten times better in a same amount of years.

      I watched the Ted talk on defense drivers. Scary shit. Thing is I work with commercial cameras and have, in hand, camera that can not only identify all kinds of objects such a human’s, they can recognize individual humans and put a name to them. They can recognize if people are loitering or if someone is being followed. They can reconsider a car from a truck from a bus from a bike. This is not done in a server but thru the power of the CPU in the camera alone. The cost. 500 dollars.

      Point being the power available in such a low cost item is staggering. Combined with a weapons platform and it is scary. A terrorist group could distribute hundreds into bushes and they could just sit there for a week in low power mode, waiting to recognize a simple person and spring into action. This is stuff we have right now off the shelf.

      What will be part of military arsenals in ten years will eclipse this current tech significantly. Troops won’t be ambushed by live human fire but by thousands of drones that care not for their survival.

      • kava@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        What I think is dangerous is terrorists or mass killers getting dozens or hundreds of small drones and installing explosives on them. Install these cameras and CPUs you mentioned that can recognize human faces and have them fly into someone’s face and then explode.

        You could kill many people and unless we start installing AA turrets all over our populated cities, there seems to be little we can do to stop it.

        • Zippy@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I had mentioned that in an earlier post. It is pretty scary. They could sit in a bush for a month using extremely low power motion detection. See any motion turn on camera to look for human recognition.

    • astraeus@programming.dev
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      2 years ago

      How is it that when it comes to reckless ideas and notions Congress takes millions of years and the Pentagon takes no more than three business days to implement?

  • Sylver@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Most military networks are closed circuit by design. I’m not sure how this could be implemented without also allowing back doors to be exploited. You wouldn’t want someone to be able to turn off your defenses as they begin an attack, for example.

  • zepheriths@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The department of defense was hacked just a few years ago, suck a button would have to have access to an internet. Meaning anyone could get to it and shut off the drones and such

  • TotalCasual@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    They’ll just murder a bunch of people and then be turned off after having been shown to be ineffective too dangerous.

    It’s not like AI is reliable at this point. Way too many people are actively ignoring experts pointing this fact out and instead obsessing over Skynet or w/e made up sci-fi BS.

    Rather than be used for war, they’ll be used for threats of violence and propaganda. It’s not a new problem. It’s just a new version of that same problem.

    • Zippy@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It is not the world we live in unfortunately. Tell that you the Russians, to China or to some terrorist group with a few hundred thousand to spare.

      • PilferJynx@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I agree. It always has been an arms race and probably always will be. Humans are too aggressively murdery for our own good. I mean it served us well when we actually had real wild adversaries, but now it’s tearing our civilization and planet apart.

        • Zippy@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          We still do have those real wild adversaries. Russia and China are only two that are of the conventional type.

          The less obvious ones are the ones we don’t think about so much. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Argentinian at one time and so fourth. Most of these countries stay in line predominately because they now understand the likelihood of Western nation military involvement it they act too aggressive.

          Point being if all Western nations backed out of the arms race right from the beginning. From WW2, I suspect WW3 would have happened long ago. One or more of those other countries would be far more active in one way or another. If we backed out now, it also would not be long before those same countries realize they could act without impunity. Nothing has really changed. Just the military damage potential is far more serious.

  • kebabslob@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 years ago

    More likely we’ll see a button to instantly transfer money from tax payer pockets to these companies’ CEO’s pockets

    • reflex@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      More likely we’ll see a button to instantly transfer money from tax payer pockets to these companies’ CEO’s pockets

      Don’t forget to add the option to tip that’s in vogue for everything these days.

  • ProfessorZhu@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    There really would be no way to have an interface that shuts it down, that an AI wouldn’t be able to compromise. Though I imagine the military will set up a plan to blow up it’s connections to power and the internet should it go rouge.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      People use the term AI too loosely. We don’t actually have artificial intelligence. We have neural networks that can perform tasks based on training data, but it’s not actually intelligent by any means. That said, fully autonomous systems have existed for decades already. Look up CIWS or CRAM.

      • ProfessorZhu@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I’m not going to get into a “no real Scottsman” arugement about the advancements in this field

        • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          Good lord. You’re talking about programs being smart enough to disable their own killswitch. That’s not a fucking thing.

          • Zippy@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Worse. They are taking about a program that has some sort of motivation or desires to disable the kill switch. It is quite silly yet. Worst case is a program bug that somehow disables. That would be highly unlikely. Particularly in such a way it would be dangerous.

          • Uncle_Sheo217@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            I wonder what would go down if a CWIS managed to go rogue. Like I know it’s literally impossible, but if it was what would it do? Would a Phalanx just fire 20mm at random? It’s an interesting hypothetical imo. Obv I agree with you that current tech is most def not even close to smart enough to disable their own programming

            • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              The Phalanx does auto target. It just can’t fire on its own. They’re designed to shoot down missiles and humans can’t aim that fast so they’re fully autonomous except for the fire control. From what I remember targets are assigned and prioritized by the AEGIS system on the ship but the Phalanx is designed to do all of the actual targeting on it’s own so that if the ship targeting stuff is damaged it can still function perfectly fine without it.

              Theres a short video out there of a phalanx targeting and tracking a passenger plane. Aparently they’re also known to track birds and people walking around on the the ship.

              So as far as one going rogue, all it would take is for the person in the control room to give it the fire command at the wrong time. Of course they fire at 4,500 rounds per minute and their large magazine only holds 1,550 rounds, so it’s spree of carnage would be pretty short lived.

          • ProfessorZhu@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            I’m assuming that op was asking about something like this I had read about it before the air force denied it and I imagine most people who have seen that haven’t seen the denial. They were also asking about what the military is “looking to build” I was trying to meet the op where they were and you came in with a pointless “akshully!”