The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
Perhaps instead we could just restructure our epistemically confabulated reality in a way that doesn’t inevitably lead to unnecessary conflict due to diverging models that haven’t grown the necessary priors to peacefully allow comprehension and the ability exist simultaneously.
breath
We are finally coming to comprehend how our brains work, and how intelligent systems generally work at any scale, in any ecosystem. Subconsciously enacted social systems included.
We’re seeing developments that make me extremely optimistic, even if everything else is currently on fire. We just need a few more years without self focused turds blowing up the world.
robots, satellites, or for that matter fighter jets or artillery can’t hold ground, all these units work in support of infantry. the future belongs to what we already have: combined arms warfare
At the end of December 2015, the BigDog project was discontinued. Despite hopes that it would one day work like a pack mule for US soldiers in the field, the gas-powered engine was deemed too noisy for use in combat. A similar project for an all-electric robot named Spot was much quieter, but could only carry 40 pounds (18 kg). Both projects are no longer in progress, but the Spot Mini was released in 2019.[2][11]
That’s just a load-bearer. But once you have a platform that’s mobile and can go most places a human can, it’s gonna get armed pretty quickly.
And it won’t happen all at once – you’ll have some humans, some robots. Maybe they just have load-bearers, like what DARPA was interested in BigDog doing. Maybe a robot gets put on point when a squad is patrolling.
But the cost of a human life is pretty high, so there’s a pretty potent incentive to consume a robot than a human life if possible.
States don’t concede wars because of equipment losses—they concede when the cost in lives becomes an existential threat to the ruling regimes. Drones fighting drones means nothing to governments unless there are human lives at stake when the drones break through.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
Perhaps instead we could just restructure our epistemically confabulated reality in a way that doesn’t inevitably lead to unnecessary conflict due to diverging models that haven’t grown the necessary priors to peacefully allow comprehension and the ability exist simultaneously.
breath
We are finally coming to comprehend how our brains work, and how intelligent systems generally work at any scale, in any ecosystem. Subconsciously enacted social systems included.
We’re seeing developments that make me extremely optimistic, even if everything else is currently on fire. We just need a few more years without self focused turds blowing up the world.
Who told you that?
(If you don’t mean ML-based things fallaciously called “AI”, then ignore this)
I’m talking about the general strides in cognitive computing and predictive processing.
https://youtu.be/A1Ghrd7NBtk?si=iaPVuRjtnVEA2mqw
Machine learning is still impressive, we just can better frame the limitations now.
For the note on scale and ecosystems, review recent work by karl friston or Michael Levin.
Thanks, watching now
What’s that from? The Simpsons?
Yes. I’m a man of few words.
I think they are perfectly cromulent words.
The Secret War of Lisa Simpson, Season 8, Episode 25. First aired in 1997.
Clip. Voiced by Willem Dafoe.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Clip.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
robots, satellites, or for that matter fighter jets or artillery can’t hold ground, all these units work in support of infantry. the future belongs to what we already have: combined arms warfare
Tell that to an auto turret that shoots anyone that approaches it.
Tell that to the cardboard box crawling its way towards the auto turret because the auto turret doesn’t scan it human
Tell that to the robotic dogs who have a heightened sense of robo-smell and can detect the guy hiding inside the cardboard box
Tell that to the perfume that places the dog instantly in debug mode and allows for remote access and subsequent flooding of the controller local net
is that autoturret in the room with us?
If it was, we’d be dead
Maybe not yet. Maybe not even soon. But it will happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1_QhJ1EhQ
At some point, you’re going to have legged robots out there, and that’ll start cutting into human advantages in mobility over rugged terrain.
BigDog got rejected by the Marines because it was too loud. But that’s not really a fundamental limitation of robotics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigDog
That’s just a load-bearer. But once you have a platform that’s mobile and can go most places a human can, it’s gonna get armed pretty quickly.
And it won’t happen all at once – you’ll have some humans, some robots. Maybe they just have load-bearers, like what DARPA was interested in BigDog doing. Maybe a robot gets put on point when a squad is patrolling.
But the cost of a human life is pretty high, so there’s a pretty potent incentive to consume a robot than a human life if possible.
Drones aren’t being used to kill other drones, they are being used to drop bombs on people
States don’t concede wars because of equipment losses—they concede when the cost in lives becomes an existential threat to the ruling regimes. Drones fighting drones means nothing to governments unless there are human lives at stake when the drones break through.