The aircraft flew up to speeds of 1,200mph. DARPA did not reveal which aircraft won the dogfight.

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    168
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    AI will win if not now, then soon. The reason is that even if it is worse than a human, the AI can pull off maneuvers that would black out a human.

    Jets are far more powerful than humans are capable of controlling. Flight suits and training can only do so much to keep the pilot from blacking out.

    • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      45
      ·
      8 months ago

      Jets are far more powerful than humans are capable of controlling.

      I think the same will eventually be true for AI, especially when you give it weapons

    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Maneuverability is much less of a factor now as BVR engagements and stealth have taken over.

      But, yeah, in general a pilot that isn’t subject to physical constraints can absolutely out maneuver a human by a wide margin.

      The future generation will resemble a Protoss Carrier sans the blimp appearance. Human controllers in 5th and 6th gen airframes who direct multiple AI wingman, or AI swarms.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      Plus the ai has no risk, outside of basic operation.

      Humans have an inherent survival instinct to which drones can just say “lol send the next one I’m dying cya”

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        8 months ago

        To fight optimally, AI needs to have a survival instinct too.

        Evolution didn’t settle on “protect my life at all costs” as our default instinct, simply by chance. It did so because it’s the best strategy in a hostile environment.

        • maynarkh@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          8 months ago

          It’s the best strategy because it takes decades to make a fully functional human, and you need humans to make more humans, plus there is the issue of genetically sustainable population sizes, etc. A fully functional aeroplane can be made much quicker, in a factory that can spit out several of them in a day. They are more expendable.

        • Turun@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          Only if the goal is reproduction. You need to survive to reproduce.

          If the goal is maximum damage for the least amount of economic cost then a suicide (anthropomorphizing the drone here) can very much make sense.

          No one would argue that a sword is better than guns or bombs, because you still have the sword after attacking.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Jets are a lot more expensive. What’s at risk is all these resources for the jet going down the drain.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          22
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Huh? Jets are far more replaceable than a human operator who takes years of training and has “needs”.

          Ya know unless your military is running on cold war fumes or something and you can’t afford to build an airframe you already have in production

          • diffusive@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            8 months ago

            Training a combat pilot used to cost (in early 2000, not sure now) 10M€ for a NATO member.

            Find me a modern jet that costs so little. Regardless of what politicians say, human life has a price… and it is waaaay below a jet (even including the training)

            • grue@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              15
              ·
              8 months ago

              Yeah, but procurement of a combat pilot has about a two-decade lead time. You can build more jets a lot quicker (potentially even including the R&D phase).

              • intensely_human@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                8 months ago

                Also as this war expands to become planet-wide, industrial output of drones will expand many orders of magnitude.

            • GBU_28@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              It’s not just money. It’s time, public perception, quantity trainers, quantity student seats etc

              A drone is ready the moment it comes off the assembly line, is flashed with software, and tested.

        • everyone_said@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          I’d imagine they’d evetually design a jet purpose built for an AI that would be a lot cheaper than a human-oriented one. Removing the need for a cockpit with seats, displays, controls, oxygen, etc would surely reduce cost. It would also open the door for innovations in air-frame design previously impossible.

        • Bgugi@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          Jets are in many ways expensive because they can’t be expendible. They also make an bunch of compromises to accommodate keeping a human alive.

          For the cost of a single f22, you could put up 60 Valkyries. I think I know which side I would bet on.

    • BrightCandle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      8 months ago

      Not so much f16s but the more modern planes can do 16G where the pilot can’t really do more than 9G. But once unshackled from a pilot a lot of instrument weight and pilot survival can be stripped from a plane design and the airframe built to withstand much more, with titanium airframes I see no reason we can’t make planes do sustained unstable turns in excess of 20G.

    • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      8 months ago

      AI will win if not now, then soon.

      This article didn’t mention it but the AI pilot did win at least one of the engagements during this testing run.

      • tal@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Not that that isn’t interesting, but I’d jump in and insert a major caution here.

        I don’t know what is being done here, but a lot of the time, wargaming and/or military exercises are presented in the media as being an evaluation of which side/equipment/country is better in a “who would win” evaluation.

        I’ve seen several prominent folks familiar with these warn about misinterpreting these, and I’d echo that now.

        That is often not the purpose of actual exercises or wargames. They may be used to test various theories, and may place highly unlikely constraints on one side that favor it or the other.

        So if someone says “the US fought China in a series of wargames in the Taiwan Strait and the US/China won in N wargames”, that may or may not be because the wargame planners were trying to find out who is likely to win an actual war, and may or may not have much to to with the expectations the planners have of a win in a typical scenario. They might be trying to find out what would happen in a particular scenario that they are working on and how to plan for that scenario. They may have structured things in a way that are not representative of what they expect to likely come up.

        To pull up an example, here’s a fleet exercise that the US ran against a simulated German fleet between World War I and II:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_problem

        Fleet Problem III and Grand Joint Army-Navy Exercise No. 2

        During Fleet Problem III, the Scouting Force, designated the “Black Force,” transited from its homeport in the Chesapeake Bay towards the Panama Canal from the Caribbean side. Once in the Caribbean, the naval forces involved in Fleet Problem III joined with the 15th Naval District and the Army’s Panama Division in a larger joint exercise.[9] The Blue force defended the canal from an attack from the Caribbean by the Black force, operating from an advance base in the Azores. This portion of the exercise also aimed to practice amphibious landing techniques and transiting a fleet rapidly through the Panama Canal from the Pacific side.[10]

        Black Fleet’s intelligence officers simulated a number of sabotage operations during the course of Fleet Problem III. On January 14, Lieutenant Hamilton Bryan, Scouting Force’s Intelligence Officer, personally landed in Panama with a small boat. Posing as a journalist, he entered the Panama Canal Zone. There, he “detonated” a series of simulated bombs in the Gatun Locks, control station, and fuel depot, along with simulating sabotaging power lines and communications cables throughout the 16th and 17th, before escaping to his fleet on a sailboat.

        On the 15th, one of Bryan’s junior officers, Ensign Thomas Hederman, also snuck ashore to the Miraflores Locks. He learned the Blue Fleet’s schedule of passage through the Canal from locals, and prepared to board USS California (BB-44), but turned back when he spotted classmates from the United States Naval Academy - who would have recognized and questioned him - on deck. Instead, he boarded USS New York (BB-34), the next ship in line, disguised as an enlisted sailor. After hiding overnight, he emerged early on the morning of the 17th, bluffed his way into the magazine of the No. 3 turret, and simulated blowing up a suicide bomb - just as the battleship was passing through the Culebra Cut, the narrowest portion of the Panama Canal. This “sank” New York, and blocked the Canal, leading the exercise arbiters to rule a defeat of the Blue Force and end that year’s Grand Joint Army-Navy Exercise.[11][10] Fleet Problem III was also the first which USS Langley (CV-1) took part in, replacing some of the simulated aircraft carriers used in Fleet Problem I.[12]

        That may be a perfectly reasonable way of identifying potential weaknesses in Panama Canal transit, but the planners may not have been aiming for the overall goal of evaluating whether, in the interwar period, Germany or the US would likely win in an overall war. Saying that the Black Fleet defeated the Blue Fleet in terms of the rules of the exercise doesn’t mean that Germany would necessarily win an overall war; evaluating that isn’t the purpose of the exercise. If, afterwards, an article says “US wargames show that interwar Germany would most likely defeat the US in a war”, that may not be very accurate.

        For the case OP is seeing, it may not even be the case that the exercise planners expect it to be likely for two warplanes to get within dogfighting range. We also do not know what, if any, constraints were placed on either side.

    • Gigan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      Jets are far more powerful than humans are capable of controlling. Flight suits and training can only do so much to keep the pilot from blacking out.

      Can they be piloted remotely? Or would that be too dangerous with latency

      • psud@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yes they can. Before AI the US was expecting to move to remote piloted jets

          • psud@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            That’s not the case yet for fighters, just things like predator drones and global hawk

            So really just surveillance and delivery of a couple of light air to surface missiles, most reported on for assassinations

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          What’s the difference? A remotely or AI-piloted fighter jet is just a big drone.

          • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            8 months ago

            Drones are designed without cockpits. Retrofitting remote-control into an F-16 does not seem like the best choice to me.

            • azuth@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              8 months ago

              Retrofitting F-16s to become drones (whether rc or ai-controlled) as well as designing a variant ditching human support for weight and monetary gains is the rational choice as long as non stealth aircraft are viable. In that case you’d stick to F-35s.

              It makes no sense to waste billions worth of perfectly capable and proven airframes, engines and avionics. Any future drone that will have at least the same level of capabilities as an f-16 will cost practically cost the same. At the cost of high performance aircraft life support does not add that much cost to a plane, pilot costs (and availability) are a much bigger issue.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Latency, signal interference, and limited human intelligence are all limiting factors in that strategy.

        If the enemy interferes with any of those, the enemy wins.

        This was is already being fought with autonomous drones. By the end of it, the robots will be unrecognizable to us now.

  • EndOfLine@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    69
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    In 2020, so-called “AI agents” defeated human pilots in simulations in all five of their match-ups - but the technology needed to be run for real in the air.

    It did not reveal which aircraft won the dogfight.

    I’m gonna guess the AI won.

    • Glytch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      I was actually assuming the opposite, because if the AI won they’d want to brag about it.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        8 months ago

        Bragging just means more money flowing to enemies’ research programs. When a fight is inevitable you want to appear as weak as possible to prevent your enemy from taking it seriously.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        No way we give up that information for free. Either way it went, the knowledge of it cost a lot to gain and is useful. If it failed you want your enemy wasting money on it. If it succeeded you want your enemy not investing in it.

    • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Hahaha how the fuck is AI going to win in air-to-air combat if we completely delete them when playing Ace Combat in the highest difficulty?

      Seethe, AI tech bros.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      19
      ·
      8 months ago

      You think aliens are actually piloting the craft that come all this way?

      You’re never gonna see an alien body because they aren’t here.

      Bet we’ve got a drone or two of theirs tho.

        • psud@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          8 months ago

          Dkarma’s comment requires context. They think aliens have visited Earth. They presume people who don’t agree with them expect that if aliens had visited Earth, some would have been shot down and alien bodies would have been recovered

            • psud@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              11
              ·
              8 months ago

              It has nothing to do with the post. I believe the post inspired dkarma to work out that brand new argument that there are no alien bodies (at area 51 probably) because the aliens would use drones

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            8 months ago

            Whether aliens are visiting us matters just about as much as whether tanks are rolling into the village of uncontacted tribes.

            Our tactical disadvantage against alien technology is zero, so they have zero priority as targets.

            Our best bet is to make friends, converse with them. But they are obviously not interested in talking. So our only option is to pray they continue to let us exist. So far they seem to be.

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              8 months ago

              Sorry, technical advantage is zero. Not disadvantage. We have zero capability to counter alien threats.

                • intensely_human@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  I like immutable records. If the contents of the edit were transparent (are they? in the mod log or something?), I’d have no problem with it. Like if the UI showed the final state but I had the whole log of creates and updates available to inspect like wikipedia, that would be cool

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    8 months ago

    We all know which aircraft won the fight.

    Those of us who play video games do at least. All the AI difficulty settings are arbitrary. You give the bot the ability to use its full capability, and the game is unplayable.

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      In video games the AI have access to all the data in the game. In real life both the human and AI have access to the same (maybe imprecise) sensor data. There are also physical limitations in the real world. I don’t think it’s the same scenario.

      • BluesF@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        8 months ago

        Not exactly, AI would be able to interpret sensor data in a more complete and thorough way. A person can only take in so much information at once - AI not so limited.

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 months ago

          Don’t get me wrong. Humans have many limitations that AI don’t in this scenario. I’m not saying that a human would do better. For example, as others have stated, an AI doesn’t suffer from G forces like a human does. AI also reads the raw sensor data instead of a screen.

          All I’m saying that this case is not the same as a videogame.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            8 months ago

            Video games can model point of view and limit AI to what they can legitimately see, while still taking the governor chip off their aiming and reaction time performance.

              • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                8 months ago

                Ai can balance a physical triple pendulum and move between positions fluidly just using vision alone, a human has no chance at coming close.

                We’re genuinely in the sci-fi robots are better than humans phase of history, by 2030 you’ll be used to seeing impressive things done by robots like dude perfect videos with people setting up crazy challenges like ‘I got my robot to throw THIS egg through THIS obstacle course and you’ll never belive how it did it!’

      • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        I think even the imperfect sensor data is enough to beat a human. My main argument for why self-driving cars will eventually be objectively safer than the best human drivers (no comment about whether that point has already done) is this:

        A human can only look at one thing at a time. Compared to a computer, we see allow, think slow, react show, move slow. A computer can look in all directions all the time, and react to danger coming from any of those directions faster than a human driver would even if they were lucky enough to be looking in the right direction. Add to that the fact that they can take in much more sensor data that isn’t available to the driver or take away from precious looking-at-the-road time for the driver to know, such as wind resistance, engine RPM, or what have you (I’m actually not a car guy so my examples aren’t the best). Bottom line: the AI has a direct connection to more data, can take more of it in at once and make faster decisions based on all of it. It’s inherently better. The “only” hurdles are making it actually interpret its sensors effectively (i.e. understand what cameras are seeing) and make good decisions based on this data. We can argue about how well either of those are in the current state of the technology, but IMO they’re both good enough today to massively outperform a human in most scenarios.

        All of this applies to an AI plane as well. So my money is on the AI.

    • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      8 months ago

      Plus they had humans on board the AI jet. I imagine it could pull some crazy insane Gs without the human pushing the engineering to the red line.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      For sure without humans the AI probably wins, assuming the instruments are good. This wasn’t without humans, but it probably still wins.

      I’m fairly certain most dogfights happen on instruments only at this point, so I don’t see a chance the human won. The AI can react faster and more aggressively. It can also almost perfectly match a G-load profile limit (which could be much higher without humans on board) where a human needs to stay a little under to not do damage.

      This is all assuming the data it was given was good and comprehensive, which I’m sure it was. It also likely trained in a simulation a lot too. This is one of those things AI is great for. Anything that requires doing something new and unique it can’t handle, but if it just requires executing an output based on inputs, that’s a perfect use case.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        I don’t know, one camera lead falls out and it’s all over for the AI. The human still is going to be more adaptable than an AI and always will be until we have full true AGI.

        Having said that if we ever do have AGI I 100% believe the US military would be stupid enough to put it in a combat aircraft.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        What if we invent artificial gravity just so we can simulate pilot orientation and g forces while they sit still in a simulator?

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            No we have g-force production. Until we release those electrogravitics from the top secret labs we can’t actually simulate g forces.

            • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              Electrogravitics seem like a conspiracy theory. Unless they’ve been around as long as human centrifuges, which DO simulate g-forces, I doubt that they’d be more economical even if they do exist.

              • Natanael@slrpnk.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                8 months ago

                There is a connection between gravity and electromagnetics, but it’s mostly through the stress-energy tensor giving photons momentum (and thus gravitational pull) but to use an EM field to measurable gravity you need absolutely insane amounts of energy.

                You essentially need the literal inverse of a supermassive nuclear explosion (almost like a small star), because the gravitational effect of energy is equivalent to the gravitational effect of the mass which it would form if bound, and given E=mc^2 and the fact that nuclear bombs are small enough to barely have measurable gravity then the math means you need truly insane amounts of energy. (unless somebody can figure out a cheat to create directional pull with much less energy, but I strongly doubt it)

                It’s more plausible that somebody would be able to scale up “optical tweezers” to move large masses (directly depositing momentum of the energy field on an object) because that no longer involves the E=mc^2 equation, but it would be even more complicated by a HUGE factor than building the type of large supercooled electromagnets which already can make humans hover (due to water in the body being diamagnetic)

                • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Why do we need “authentic” g-forces to be “created”? As you’ve said, people already feel g-forces in centrifuges.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Whataboutism taken to its extreme there.

          Hell, what if we invented warp drive that allowed us to teleport bombs directly into our enemies headquarters?

  • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    Are dogfights even still a thing?
    I remember playing an F15 simulator 20 years ago where “dogfighting” already meant clicking on a radar blip 100 miles away, then doing something else while your missile killed the target.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      8 months ago

      ‘Dogfighting’ mostly just means air-to-air combat now. They do still make fighter jets that have guns or can mount guns, but I think they’re primarily intended for surface targets rather than air targets.

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Many aircraft guns do that. It’s also usually automatic, look a direction and the gun points where you look.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 months ago

          I honestly wouldn’t be that surprised if an AI powered fighter jet got point defence systems installed. It could react to put an incoming missile directly in the path of the point defense and possibly shoot it before it hits. With that said, I don’t know how useful it’d be. If it’s coming right at you the shrapnel is still on its way. Maybe it can react and plan in such a way to avoid it. I guess it depends on the relative speed and direction of the incoming missile.

            • Cethin@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              8 months ago

              Most dogfights are done by missiles these days. You lock on, fire, and forget. A ballistic projectile wouldn’t be useful at those ranges. I guess if AI fighter jets change progression to bring things back to close-in combat something like that may be useful. I don’t predict it’d happen, but there’s a chance. Missiles can just pack so much more thrust-per-second into a small package than a jet can, but AI jets could be a lot more agile and essentially a missile firing missile, or similar, letting them close distance better whole avoiding incoming ordinance.

    • azuth@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      Well if both sides get working stealth dogfights are going to become more common.

      But the US seems to estimate it’s adversaries do not have such capability at the moment since it’s ordering new F-15s with the major change being air to air missile capacity.

      Missiles also did not have 100 miles range 20 years ago. That’s without considering actually detecting and tracking the target.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Missiles also did not have 100 miles range 20 years ago.

        Somewhat missing then point there I feel.

        They are right, I was thinking the exact same thing when I read the headline, aircraft don’t really engage in dog fights anymore. It’s all missiles and long-range combat. I don’t think any modern war would involve aircraft shooting at each other with bullets.

        • azuth@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          No not really, my point is that people have a distorted and exaggerated view of BVR. 100 miles was beyond even the max range of common missiles and even with modern missiles like meteor it’s completely unrealistic to fire at that kind of range. Provided that you have detected and are able to track the target at that range.

          I don’t know if modern planes will have to resort to guns but WVR dogfights with IR missiles are more likely than destroying F-35s at BVR ranges.

  • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    8 months ago

    I am a FIRM believer in any automated kill without a human pulling the trigger is a war crime

    Yes mines yes uavs yes yes yes

    It is a crime against humanity

    Stop

    • antidote101@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      What if the human is pulling the trigger to “paint the target” and tag it for hunt and destroy then the drone goes and kills it? Because that’s how lots of missles already work. So where’s the line?

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        The line is where an automatic process target and execute a human being. When it is automated. The arming of a device is not sufficient to warrant a human interaction, and as such mines are also not allowed.

        This should in my opinion always have been the case. Mines are indiscriminate and have proven to be wildly inhumane in several ways. Significantly, innocents are often killed.

        But mines don’t paint the picture of what automated slaughter can lead to.

        The point has been laid that when the conscious mind has to kill, it makes war have an important way to end, in the mind.

        The dangers extend well beyond killing innocent targets, another part is the coldness of allowing a machine to decide, that is beyond morally corrupt. There is something terrifying about the very idea that facing one of these weapons, there is nothing to negotiate, the cold calculations that want to kill you are not human. It is a place where no human ever wants to be. But war is horrible. It’s the escalation of automated triggers that can lead to exponential death with no remorse which is just a terrible danger.

        The murder weapons has nobody’s intent behind them, except very far back, in the arming and the program. It open for scenarios where mass murder becomes easy and terrifyingly cold.

        Kind of like the prisoner’s dilemma shows us, that when war escalates, it can quickly devolve into revenge narratives, and when either side has access to cold impudent kills, they will use them. This removes even more humanity from the acts and the violence can reach new heights beyond our comprehension.

        Weapons of mass destruction with automated triggers will eventually seal our existence if we don’t abolish it with impunity. It has been seen over and over how the human factor is the only grace that ever end or contain war. Without this component I think we are just doomed to have the last intent humans ever had was revenge, and the last emotions fear and complete hopelessness.

        • antidote101@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Well, that’s all very idealistic, but it’s likely not going to happen.

          Israel already used AI to pick bombing sites, those bombs and missiles would have been programmed with altitudes and destinations (armed) then dropped. The pilots only job these days is to avoid interception, fly over the bombing locations, tag the target when acquired, and drop them. Most of this is already done in software.

          Eventually humans will leave the loop because unlike self-driving cars, these technologies won’t risk the lives of the aggressor’s citizens.

          If the technology is seen as unstoppable enough, there may be calls for warnings to be given, but I suspect that’s all the mercy that will be shown…

          … especially if it’s a case of a country with automated technologies killing one without or with stochastically meaningless defenses (eg. Defenses that modelling and simulations show won’t be able to prevent such attacks).

          No, in all likelihood the US will tell the country the attack sites, the country either will or will not have the technical level to prevent an amount of damage, will evacuate all necessary personal, and whoever doesn’t get the message or get out in time will be automatically killed.

          Where defenses are partially successful, that information will go into the training data for the next model, or upgrade, and the war machine will roll on.

          • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            Sorry I was stressed when replying. Yeah in those cases humans have pulled the trigger. At several stages.

            When arming a murder bot ship and sending to erase an island of life, you then lose control. That person is not pulling loads and loads of triggers. The triggers are automatic by a machine making the decision to end these lives.

            And that is a danger, same as with engineered bio warfare. It just cannot be let out of the box even, or we all may die extremely quick.

              • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                8 months ago

                The entire point of automating the killing is that it is no dead man’s switch or any other human interaction involved in the kill. It is moot if there is one such. Call offs or dead switch back doors safety contingencies are not a solution to rampant unwanted slaughter as it can fail in so many ways and when the wars escalate to the point where those need to be used it is too late because there are 5 different strains of murder bots and you can only stop the ones you have codes to and those codes are only given to like three people at top secret level 28

          • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            8 months ago

            You described a scenarios where a human was involved in several stages of the killing so it’s no wonder those don’t hold up

        • antidote101@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Only the losing side is subject to war crimes trials, and no doubt rules of engagement will be developed and followed to prevent people going to jail due to “bad kills”.

          There are really no “bad kills” in the armed services, there’s just limited exposure of public scandals.

          Especially for the US who doesn’t subject its self to international courts like The Hague. So any atrocities, accidents, or war crimes will still just be internal scandals and temporary.

          Same as it is today.

        • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          Of course there isn’t just like there isn’t when a human makes a mistake on the battlefield, you think that every civilian killed by an American soldier in Afghanistan resulted in a trial and punishment? American hasn’t executed amy soldiers since 1961 (for rape and attempted murder of a child in austria, not during war)

          Honestly at least the military code will obey orders and only focus on the objective rather than rape and murder for fun.

        • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          Like if someone made a biological weapon that wipes out a continent

          Will someone go to prison?

          It’s no difference

    • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      You mean it should be a war crime, right? Or is there some treaty I am unaware of?

      Also, why? I don’t necessarily disagree, I am just curious about your reasoning.

      • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        8 months ago

        Not OP, but if you can’t convince a person to kill another person then you shouldn’t be able to kill them anyways.

        There are points in historical conflicts, from revolutions to wars, when the very people you picked to fight for your side think “are we the baddies” and just stop fighting. This generally leads to less deaths and sometimes a more democratic outcome.

        If you can just get a drone to keep killing when any reasonable person would surrender you’re empowering authoritarianism and tyranny.

        • n3m37h@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          8 months ago

          Take WWI Christmas when everyone got out of the trenches and played some football (no not American foot touches the ball 3x a game)

          It almost ended the war

          • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            Yes the humanity factor is vital

            Imagine the horrid destructive cold force of automated genocide, it can not be met by anything other than the same or worse and at that point we are truly doomed

            Because there will then be no one that can prevent it anymore

            It must be met with worse opposition than biological warfare did after wwI, hopefully before tragedy

        • ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          see star trek TNG episode The Arsenal of Freedom for a more explicit visualisation of this ☝️ guy’s point.

      • i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Mines are designated war crimes by the Geneva convention Ottawa treaty because of the indiscriminate killing. Many years ago, good human right lawyers could have extended that to drones… (Source: i had close friends in international law)

        But i feel like now the tides have changed and tech companies have influenced the general population to think that ai is good enough to prevent “indiscriminate” killing.

        Edit: fixed the treaty name, thanks!

        • tal@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Mines are designated war crimes by the Geneva convention

          Use of mines is not designated a war crime by the Geneva Convention.

          Some countries are members of a treaty that prohibits the use of some types of mines, but that is not the Geneva Convention.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

        • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Mines are not part of what people refer to as the Geneva conventions. There is a separate treaty specifically banning some landmines, that was signed by a lot of countries but not really any that mattered.

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yes

        Because it is a slippery slope and dangerous to our future existence as a species

          • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            First it is enemy tanks. Then enemy air. Then enemy boats and vehicles, then foot soldiers and when these weapons are used the same happens to their enemy. Then at last one day all humans are killed

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      8 months ago

      I see this as a positive: when both sides have AI unmanned planes, we get cool dogfights without human risk! Ideally over ocean or desert and with Hollywood cameras capturing every second in exquisite detail.

    • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      I am a firm believer that any war is a crime and there is no ethical way to wage wars lmao It’s some kind of naive idea from extremely out of touch politicans.

      War never changes.

      The idea that we don’t do war crimes and they do is only there to placate our fragile conscience. To assure us that yes we are indeed the good guys. That kills of infants by our soldiers are merely the collateral. A necessary price.

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Absolutely. But

        There’s a science and whole cultures built around war now

        It is important to not infantilize the debate by being absolutist and just shutting any action out.

        I am a hard core pacifist at heart.

        But this law I want is just not related to that. It is something I feel is needed just to not spell doom on our species. Like with biological warfare

        How often do robots fail? How can anyone be so naive as to not see the same danger as with bio warfare? You can’t assure a robot to not become a mass murder cold ass genocidal perpetual machine. And that’s a no no if we want to exist

    • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      I broadly agree, but that’s not what this is, right?

      This is a demonstration of using AI to execute combat against an explicitly selected target.

      So it still needs the human to pull the trigger, just the trigger does some sick plane stunts rather than just firing a bullet in a straight line.

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        I would imagine it was more than evasive since they called it a dogfight, but ye

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    8 months ago

    So many downers here. I see this as the step to the true way war was meant to be fought- with giant robots on the moon.

  • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    One step closer to machine domination.

    Like, not even in a joking sense. Ukraine is using a ton of drones, the future of physical warfare will simply be a test resources and production.

    I’m honestly not sure if this will be good or bad in the longterm. Absolutely saving any amount of human life is a good thing, but when that is no longer a significant factor, I wonder if we will go to (and stay at) war for more trivial reasons.

    • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      I’m hoping that the sheer cost of executing that sort of war will continue to be a prohibiting factor like it is today

  • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    8 months ago

    giving AI military training is “responsible”, is it? Oh good, I’m glad training software to kill is going “responsibly”, that’s good to know. Kinda seems like the way a republican uses words - backwards, in opposition to their actual meaning, but hey, fuck the entire world, right?

    • tal@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      If you want some sort of arms control agreement for AI, you’re going to be faced with the problem of verification that countries are complying.

      My guess is that that’s probably very difficult to do. All you need is a datacenter somewhere and someone with expertise.

      And if an arms control agreement doesn’t exist, then a country not developing a promising technology just disadvantages that country.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        And if an arms control agreement does exist, it’s just a trap for those naive enough to think such things work.

        Putin got us to avoid prepping for a Ukraine invasion simply by repeating that he wasn’t going to invade. And right up until the very moment it happened, the dominant conversation still was not based on the premise that he was going to.

        The whole concept of doublespeak works because humans have a powerful compulsion to simply believe what others say. Even if we know their actions and their words are in conflict, we have an extremely hard time following our observations of their actions, and ignoring their words.

        It’s like the Stroop task, but with other humans’ behavior instead of ink colors.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      Conservatives tend to be those who, by experience, have been forced out of the notion that the base of existence is not war.

      It’s an illusion which can only be maintained when others are facing the war.

      Humans tend to remain in the comfortable illusion until they are forced out of it, usually by an encounter with a psychopath victimizing them, or an actual war.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      8 months ago

      Oh 100%.

      If the options are “make gigantic profit” or “do what’s right for the future of humanity” do you even need to ask what we’re going to do?

      • Siegfried@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Not at all, but it kind of bugs me how Asimov’s perception of the future weighted so much fear towards AI over profit.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      8 months ago

      Is a plane even the best form factor if it’s not limited by human physiology? I imagine an agile missile with smaller missiles attached to it would be better.

      • antidote101@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Manufacturing costs will probably determine whether it carries missiles, or is a missile.

    • plz1@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      That’s likely the plan, but they have to start with known-working hardware configurations first.

    • A_A@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      it’s the ground that’s upside down because it happened on the other side of the globe 😋.