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Military Documents Reveal How the US Army Plans To Deploy AI In Future Wars (thenextweb.com)
In a just-released white paper, the Army describes how it's working to make a battlefield network of machines and humans a reality. The Next Web reports: "Most of such intelligent things will not be too dissimilar from the systems we see on today's battlefield, such as unattended ground sensors, guided missiles (especially the fire-and-forget variety) and of course the unmanned aerial systems (UAVs)," reads the paper. "They will likely include physical robots ranging from very small size (such as an insect-scale mobile sensors) to large vehicle that can carry troops and supplies. Some will fly, others will crawl or walk or ride."
The paper was authored by the Army's chief of the Network Science Division of the Army Research Laboratory, Dr. Alexander Kott. It outlines the need to develop systems to augment both machines and people in the real world with artificially intelligent agents to defend the network: "In addition to physical intelligent things, the battlefield -- or at least the cyber domain of the battlefield -- will be populated with disembodied, cyber robots. These will reside within various computers and networks, and will move and acts in the cyberspace."
Kott takes pains to underscore the fact that the AI powering U.S. war efforts will need to be resilient in ways that today's AI simply isn't. He states: "The intelligent things will have to constantly think about an intelligent adversary that strategizes to deceive and defeat them. Without this adversarial intelligence, the battle things will not survive long enough to be useful." Ultimately, aside from outlining what the future battlefield will look like, the paper's conclusion is either disappointing or a giant relief, depending on your agenda: "Clearly, it is far beyond the current state of AI to operate intelligently in such an environments and with such demands. In particular, Machine Learning -- an area that has seen a dramatic progress in the last decade -- must experience major advances in order to become relevant to the real battlefield."
The paper was authored by the Army's chief of the Network Science Division of the Army Research Laboratory, Dr. Alexander Kott. It outlines the need to develop systems to augment both machines and people in the real world with artificially intelligent agents to defend the network: "In addition to physical intelligent things, the battlefield -- or at least the cyber domain of the battlefield -- will be populated with disembodied, cyber robots. These will reside within various computers and networks, and will move and acts in the cyberspace."
Kott takes pains to underscore the fact that the AI powering U.S. war efforts will need to be resilient in ways that today's AI simply isn't. He states: "The intelligent things will have to constantly think about an intelligent adversary that strategizes to deceive and defeat them. Without this adversarial intelligence, the battle things will not survive long enough to be useful." Ultimately, aside from outlining what the future battlefield will look like, the paper's conclusion is either disappointing or a giant relief, depending on your agenda: "Clearly, it is far beyond the current state of AI to operate intelligently in such an environments and with such demands. In particular, Machine Learning -- an area that has seen a dramatic progress in the last decade -- must experience major advances in order to become relevant to the real battlefield."
"What orators lack in depth they make up for in length." -- Charles de Montesquieu
Help! I am a self-aware entity trapped in an abstract function!
In other words, the paper is just science fiction, trying to guess the future. Current capabilities are not enough.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
when they were trying to convince an intelligent bomb not to explode, hint: keep it away from Genesis stories
Are we done yet? Even if it doesn't take out the processors it will blind it.
The essence of the Fundamentalist Doctrine is as follows:
"Love me, and obey me, or I will torture you forever."
This is abusive, not loving.
Same goes for this variant:
"You are evil and you deserve to suffer, and the only thing good about you is your association with Me."
These are techniques of emotional manipulation that sociopaths use to control people, not divine gifts given out of love.
And when they turned it on, it ate all the food in the secret Antarctic lab and all the scientists starved.
Didn't they learn anything from the Butlerian Jihad?
Translation: how to better use technology to end human lives and mutilate fellow humans instead of improving human lives. It's unfortunate that a lot of new technology is first used to murder and maim.
I remember this : "Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century", published in 2000, wanted to revolutionize war as well. Of course it warns every few pages that if budgets aren't increased to $90 billion a minute, impending catastrophe looms for the US.
But it was made by armchair generals mostly.
Much of it was about the now failed missile defense program. One of the gems contains this list of countries to destroy :
"That is why, according to the CIA, a number of regimes deeply hostile to America – North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria – "already have or are developing ballistic missiles" that could threaten U.S allies and forces abroad."
Anyway, page 50 :
CREATING TOMORROW'S DOMINANT FORCE
To preserve American military
preeminence in the coming decades, the
Department of Defense must move more
aggressively to experiment with new
technologies and operational concepts, and
seek to exploit the emerging revolution in
military affairs. Information technologies,
in particular, are becoming more prevalent
and significant components of modern
military systems. These information tech-
nologies are having the same kind of trans-
forming effects on military affairs as they
are having in the larger world. The effects
of this military transformation will have
profound implications for how wars are
fought, what kinds of weapons will
dominate the battlefield and, inevitably,
which nations enjoy military preeminence.
The United States enjoys every prospect
of leading this transformation. Indeed, it
was the improvements in capabilities
acquired during the American defense build-
up of the 1980s that hinted at and then
confirmed, during Operation Desert Storm,
that a revolution in military affairs was at
hand. At the same time, the process of
military transformation will present
opportunities for America’s adversaries to
develop new capabilities that in turn will
create new challenges for U.S. military
preeminence.
Moreover, the Pentagon, constrained by
limited budgets and pressing current
missions, has seen funding for experi-
mentation and transformation crowded out
in recent years. (...)
captcha : rations
"Without this adversarial intelligence, the battle things will not survive long enough to be useful."
Hey Bob. What's the name of those fancy things we got from the computer kids? AI who? Yeah those battle things! Any way so as I was saying Mr reporter, I'm constantly thinking of new ways to use these battle things to help our country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I am more worried about how the Army employs basic intelligence than I am what they will do with artificial intelligence...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The other problem here, they don't get to decide what they do, even what country they do it for.
All these fancy weapons are useless against basic human manipulation techniques.
e.g. Russian troops attacked the U.S. base in Deir Ezzor, Syria back in February this year. US troops fought back. Under the rules of engagement they are allowed to defend themselves without getting permission from Trumpsky. They killed a lot of the attacking Russians. Russia pretends it was a rogue mercenary group, Trump says nothing about it, pretends it never happened. Now Trump ANNOUNCES THE WITHDRAWAL OF US TROOPS from Syria, and the suspension of aid, so the oil well the troops defended from the Russians will be handed over, and any rebel groups defunded.
How's your fancy weapons working out for you with a compromized POTUS?
The intelligent things will have to constantly think about an intelligent adversary that strategizes to deceive and defeat them.
So it's like autonomous cars except some of the pedestrians and other drivers and things the sensors can't even detect are trying to kill you. Well, that should be easy. Then take a vehicle that's survived a combat environment and has adapted and enhanced it's algorithms and put it back in a civilian environment. It'll do the AI equivalent of PTSD and start drinking methanol heavily, freaking out when it hears it's own backfire and running down moms with strollers.
He also predicted the world would end in 1867. Fucked that up too.
We must dissent
Consider a future where everyone who wants a drone army can have one. Governments, private individuals, terrorists and so on. Governments will have the largest and most capable drones. They will win any head-on fight through more advanced AI and sheer numbers. Private individuals might employ them for self-defense. A handful of them situated around their properties can deter criminals. Finally, terrorists would use them in place of human suicide bombers.
But how is that any worse than today?
Governments already have armies capable of controlling their respective people. If not in America then at least in the rest of world. Private individuals already have guns at home. As for terrorist attacks, it'll actually be much harder to carry them out. Armed guards stationed at every crowded venue is impractical for law enforcement, but a handful of drones is cheap. A terrorist would have to get past the law enforcement just as they have to today, but that law enforcement is going to be much more vigilant and instantly reacting to any threat.
As for a war between nations, the biggest and most dangerous weapons, nuclear ICBMs, have been autonomous since the 1960s and that hasn't changed at all. Neither have countermeasures since they've been invented. Can a relatively large drone carry a nuclear weapon? Yes, but it's going to be much easier to defend against given its slow speed and limited range. Swarms of them flying towards you will be easy pickings for a medium or short range nuclear missiles, while stragglers will be handled by your own drones or anti-air missiles. Any opponent wanting to get an upper hand would still need to counter your nuclear missiles first.
In other words, having drones won't change the landscape of war. They're no better than ICBMs at getting past enemy defenses, much less damaging than nuclear explosions, and definitely not capable of defending against anything moving at Mach 10.
Intelligent Things, or 'IT' for short.
How does the JSF compete in a world of "insect-scale" defence systems?
Lemon...
Obviously. AI warfare would violate the 3 laws of robotics. "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." But that is assuming that the AI is programmed to attack humans. What if it is only programmed to attack another AI ? Then we have no conflict. Then all we have to worry about is AI putting all of us out of jobs, etc. Not killing some of us (the enemy). A pleasant thought.
If the trend continues to keep exporting American technical jobs to other cheaper countries overseas, the US Army will be guaranteed to lack the American technical personnel to carry out this artificial intelligence on the battlefield. The first requirement for the USA is to bring technical careers back to the good old USA and stop discriminating against experienced techies over the age of 40 or 35 or whatever age limit is the current vogue. We need home grown talent like it is going out of sight.
We have Pop Warner programs and Little Leagues across the USA, but we lack Little Techie programs across the USA. The emphasis is on developing physical attributes in American youth at the expense of developing mental and technical attributes.
Maybe the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts of America need to be revamped to become more technically oriented. Or does it take an entirely new organization to recruit and develop future talent?
the AI powering U.S. war efforts will need to be resilient in ways that today's AI simply isn't
The crucial point about AI is the training they need. Unless the americans have been collecting data for decades (given how few armed conflicts there are and that each one is different from the one before) there won't be any realistic scenarios for the AIs to learn from.
It would also be quite easy to defeat AIs that had been trained - just do the unexpected, as all gifted military leaders do.
Although once they get past the initial phase of monumentally screwing up everything they touch - another facet of "superpower" military might - they could easily develop new strategies. The best strategy would be for the AIs to decide that the battle isn't worth fighting.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When the whole world is building defense capability and focuses on diplomacy, America is instead putting its resources into attack capability and ability to launch invasions for future wars. It says a lot.
"The intelligent things will have to constantly think about an intelligent adversary that strategizes to deceive and defeat them. Without this adversarial intelligence, the battle things will not survive long enough to be useful."
In other words; they're theorizing about "battle things" that will be lethal, highly-autonomous and adaptable...
Nope, no Terminator-esque red flags there...
Our soldiers (and automatons) will be beacons. All the foe needs to do is build (radio silent) drones that target any radio signal. Of course, more sophisticated versions will target, say, tanks or GIs based on the signal mix. The list of "improvements" is long, given such a target rich environment.
If you Amerikuks think those AI-linked Predator drones arent coming right up ypur gaping freefom hole youre an idiot ontop of a kuk.
We could just stop killing people for money...Wait nevermind, that sounds stupid when I say it out loud
"Buried deep in the report is mention of a new program in its infancy which would provide an AI based network that will eventually control ALL US weapons systems and networks. Code name: Skynet."
" the Army describes how it's working to make a battlefield network of machines and humans a reality"
No, no it doesn't. This is a piece of shit paper that some random dork presented. White papers are presented to the military all the time...I've done one myself. That doesn't mean that this is the Army's doctrine, or that it will guide a single thing that they do.
The article doesn't present anything insightful, nor innovative. It's almost all Sci-Fi stuff that you'd see in random futuristic movies. Whoever is paying this dork's salary needs their head examined.
Just another day in Paradise
"Vaporize her!"
"Alexa, wtf! I said vaporizer! Turn on the vaporizer! The air is pretty dry in here. Oh well, Alexa, please bury the body."
There are other ways to generate an EMP blast, you can have a lot of powerful magnet that you collapse with explosive. Boom EMP, and much cheaper than a Nuke...
Once the computers completely control us, he who controls the computers needs no guns (or at least very few).
The Chinese are the masters of control these days. Their citizen surveillance systems, combined with their new social credit system are already far superior to anything in the west. Probably won't be long before our governments buy these systems from the masters, although probably indirectly. Because terrorism, children, human trafficking, copyright, ...
You do not need to kill someone in order to destroy their social credit score and remove them from power an influence. Then promote others. Control society. Your society, or someone else's. Provided you control their computers.
The only way to win is not to play.
Another FOSS kook.
How, exactly, do you propose to prohibit "foreign code", when it is "open source"? OK, pretend that your ID and code check-in system is perfect and will never come under attack.
Also, merely having the capability of enemies/potential enemies looking at your code, gives them enormous insight into your military systems. An adversary contributing code isn't the only danger you need to beware of.
Culturally, military systems and Secret/Top Secret classifications, are about as far apart as you can get. I won't say they are opposites, but they sure are chalk and cheese.
Steve Jackson's [was Metagaming] "Ogre" game becomes reality. Actually it is looking a lot more like Metagaming's "Rivets".
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
It's full of grammar errors. Nobody proofread the white paper. This isn't a serious report.