US Army Says It Could Acquire Targets Faster With 'Advanced AI' (404media.co)
- Reference: 0176988427
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/04/09/2034234/us-army-says-it-could-acquire-targets-faster-with-advanced-ai
- Source link: https://www.404media.co/u-s-army-says-it-could-acquire-targets-faster-with-advanced-ai/
> The line comes from a new report from the Government Accountability Office -- a nonpartisan watchdog group that investigates the federal government. The report is titled "Defense Command and Control" and is, in part, about the Pentagon's recent push to integrate AI systems into its workflow.
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> Across the government, and especially in the military, there has been a push to add or incorporate AI into various systems. The pitch here is that AI systems would help the Pentagon ID targets on the battlefield and allow those systems to help determine who lives and who dies. The Ukrainian and Israeli military are already using similar systems but the practice is fraught and controversial.
[1] https://www.404media.co/u-s-army-says-it-could-acquire-targets-faster-with-advanced-ai/
Accuracy (Score:2)
Speed is great, but the article isn't exactly reassuring about the system's accuracy.
Re: (Score:2)
Kill them all, and let Bot sort them out
Emphasis on "Could." (Score:2)
> The U.S. Army told the government it had a lot of success using AI to "process targets" during a recent deployment. It said that it had used AI systems to identify targets at a rate of 55 per day but could get that number up to 5,000 a day with "advanced artificial intelligence tools in the future." 404 Media:
This illustrates the problem with the current obsession with AI prophecy. "could get that number up to" but that will require "advanced artificial intelligence tools in the future." I'm sorry, but I don't believe the prophets because they've been fairly consistently lying about what these tools are capable of right now. Why should we believe that they have any sort of grip whatsoever on what they'll be capable of in the future?
On top of that, do we really want to automate our killing capabilities this way?
Accuracy? (Score:2)
Raw quantity/day seems like a really weird metric to be assessing target processing on; and one that was probably at its highest during some barely transistorized period when it was still slide rules and saturation bombing with periodic estimates written up into reports on some early IBM dinosaur. The hit rate was probably atrocious; but if enough fragments go out small percentages add up.
If you are even talking about sensors, much less 'AI' you are implying some set of accuracy and prioritization metri
Rapid Target Acquisition (Score:2)
... is a requirement for modern wars. Anti-swarm countermeasures. Imagine your AA system being overwhelmed by a coordinated simultaneous assault of 100+ AI-driven drones. Most of the drones are cheap fakes that carry no weapons. You have no idea which is which, you need to acquire and shoot down as many drones as you can, preferably all of them.
Allowing "those systems to help determine who lives and who dies" is never the goal.
China (Score:3)
China announces their AI system can present over 5000 targets a day.
Accurately (Score:4, Informative)
I am sure that an AI system can identify targets more rapidly than a human, the question is can they identify targets accurately. An increased rate of friendly fire or noncombatant incidents is not going to be acceptable, at least to the US population. I am not sure that same would apply the Russians or the Chinese.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, This information is useless without details.
Even if it identified false positives at the same rate, there would be more false positive targets. It would need to be much better at not getting false positives. And then for the false positives that are found, Are they the same rating of false as human targeting or worse (school instead of house, etc).
Re: (Score:2)
To be clear, Quantity should never be the project's first goal, accuracy should be which would then lend to being able to up quantity.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not entirely sure I agree with the sentiment about the average US Citizen being concerned about increased non-combatant incidents.
Just look at Gaza and Yemen, in many cases folks are either oblivious to the occurrences or feel its ok in an 'ends justify the means' sort of way.
As long as US soldiers aren't getting killed the citizenry is, for the most part, pretty ok with whatever.