All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Interesting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.
With apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point.
Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.
> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation.
How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have.
It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have
* AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies
* AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help
* AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
* AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget
Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
These systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them.
"This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."
The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.
"Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."
Dogfights aren't really a thing for a modern military. What the AI enables is much higher endurance than is feasible with a human in the loop. They planes can stay flying as long as they can be refueled, which is also going AI.
There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...
VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.
VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.
The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".
The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".
I'm sure there will be a next generation of jet drones that are cheaper, but the autonomy kit here is probably still cheaper than new jet drones.
I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.
"I apologize, that was indeed a wedding party, not a terrorist camp I wrongly assumed. You are totally right, wasting those 3 Hydras was unacceptable. On a brighter side, we've got 39 more to go!
Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"
Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)
I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
While they can, drones are still limited by physics.
Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.
It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.
Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.
Human control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated.
Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
The US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets.
Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.
The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
Not a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.
Interesting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.
ref: https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I?t=29
No worries, these will all be controlled by AIs sitting in orbiting data centers part of the Starlink constellation.
And in any case, no one is building humanoid robots.
Ha - this was the first thing that came to mind. I read this in Arnold's voice.
I didn't read it in Arnold's voice till I saw your comment, so thank you.
I find it quite sombre to see this comment from a peson with that handle.
This whole AI hype is such a convenient cover for the decisions of the 0.001%
It really is. It's the perfect excuse to do what they please.
That's not precisely how I remember that quote... But it's on the Internet, so my memory must be faulty.
With apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point.
Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
> Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots.
In a dogfight?
As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
What are you talking about, Iraq fell in a month not years.
Did it? You mean operational govt fell. The country was fought over for 10 yrs, which the U.S. then backed out.
Israel got a regime change while U.S. tax payers received the bill.
In the end, it’s still a country.
I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.
> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation.
How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have.
It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies * AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help * AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America * AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget
Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
Are dogfights still relevant? Isn't it mostly shooting missiles outside of visual range these days?
These systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them.
"This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."
The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.
"Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."
Which are these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-unmanned_teaming
And everyone is developing these.
Dogfights aren't really a thing for a modern military. What the AI enables is much higher endurance than is feasible with a human in the loop. They planes can stay flying as long as they can be refueled, which is also going AI.
> I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time,
Unfortunately you're wrong. It's not soon. It's 6 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
Sounds like a very expensive drone
Yes-ish.
There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...
VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.
VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.
The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".
The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".
I'm sure there will be a next generation of jet drones that are cheaper, but the autonomy kit here is probably still cheaper than new jet drones.
I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.
They are already building them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_FQ-42_Dark_Mer...
More like it'll fly itself while the pilot engages in other tasks.
Every pound of weapons officer/navigator is a pound you can't put on target all else being equal.
* You're absolutely right. My altitude is dropping precipitously. Let me check my elevator position to see if that's causing the problem.
* Bash Check elevator position
* Thought for 8s
"I apologize, that was indeed a wedding party, not a terrorist camp I wrongly assumed. You are totally right, wasting those 3 Hydras was unacceptable. On a brighter side, we've got 39 more to go!
Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"
So like some sort of automatic pilot then?
Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)
I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
Does the presence of humans on board limit the maneuverability of these aircraft in any way? E.g. in terms of acceleration?
Yes. Humans can survive 9g for only a few seconds, while a drone could do much sharper manouvers
While they can, drones are still limited by physics.
Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.
It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.
Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.
But they also have their limits.
Bolts and trusses (and solder joints) have tensile strength limits, but it can be higher than what humans can take.
Drones have human operators. This is a murderbot.
It’s a drone. That can kill people.
There are already semi-autonomous drones in Ukraine.
Human control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated.
Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
The US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets.
Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.
The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
The drones of Ace Combat 7 are coming closer to reality
This is a huge waste of resources. F-16s were designed for humans. You can get MUCH better results designing the airframe around the lack of one.
It's a step on from the F-16 flight simulator AI competition in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
Not a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.
Hey look, the lawn darts are now AI-controlled.
[dead]
What a waste of resources.