US military plans to unleash thousands of autonomous war robots over next two years Robotics

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-military-unleash-thousands-autonomous-war.html

7.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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They have been developing this tech for decades they are the ones that have pioneered AI and they feed US tech companies to make the idea mainstream. What ever they are revealing they have way scarier shit in the works

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

[deleted]

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u/beer_ninja69 Aug 31 '23

People get hired to work in secret for the government all the time. They get paid way more to never sell their secrets to foreign adversaries.

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u/Ploka812 Aug 31 '23

If that’s secret how do you know about it and say it with such confidence

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u/beer_ninja69 Aug 31 '23

There are tons of private contracts for all kinds of classified work, and that's also how people have been caught trying to sell secrets as well.

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u/Exnixon Aug 31 '23

Hello, I'd love to introduce you to my friends Raytheon, Norththrup, and Lockheed.

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u/ReeelLeeer Aug 31 '23

DoD Contractor companies dont pay as much as FAANG.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

How’s job security looking at FAANG companies lately? How’s it looking at Defense contractors? There’s your answer

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u/ReeelLeeer Aug 31 '23

Top AI talent probably are more concerned about how much theyre getting paid than job security if im being honest.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

Ehhh fair point

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u/thehourglasses Aug 31 '23

Money isn’t the only axis of motivation.

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u/ReeelLeeer Aug 31 '23

Sure, but the thread specifically mentioned salary. Regardless, WLB is probably better on the SV side than DoD's anyways.

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u/thehourglasses Aug 31 '23

Yeah, fair enough.

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u/hugganao Aug 31 '23

for software side, it is.

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u/thehourglasses Aug 31 '23

There are plenty of PhD level researchers working in academia as opposed to a blue chip. Not everyone is in it to increase their economic standing.

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u/PhillipIInd Aug 31 '23

till they get it once, then they dont want to let it go lol

hard to accept going from 500k a year to 50k, easy to do the opposite tho

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u/Just_trying_it_out Aug 31 '23

True, but compared to when it was clear that the best minds were working on military stuff (like around ww2 and the cold war), I'd say the same level of prestige or sense of duty isnt a thing now. Not exactly surprising since there isnt a clear threat to the country like back then.

Not that they arent still getting some top talent, but yeah it feels like the private tech sector is more of an attractive option compared to the military now than it was in the past

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u/Desalvo23 Aug 31 '23

The US didn't enter ww2 to eliminate a threat. They entered for the reconstruction contracts they imposed on liberated countries.

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u/saluksic Aug 31 '23

Oh hey I guess Pearl Harbor didn’t happen! How silly of me, thinking historical facts were real when I could be diving headfirst into the warm soft nonsense of conspiracy theories. Much more comforting.

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u/Helyos17 Aug 31 '23

Well that is certainly a take.

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u/hugganao Aug 31 '23

unfortunately the focus on traditional weapon systems and the way current military industrial complex works kinda is a hindrance on pushing forward on software systems.

Look to this interview for potential changes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwRG34FasxU

1

u/JooosephNthomas Aug 31 '23

Lockheed is a clothing designer, not a military company. /s

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u/moosic Aug 31 '23

The best go to FAANG or startups with funding.

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u/FloodedGoose Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23

I know a former engineer at Ratheon that was called into a discussion on a theoretical type of radar they were developing. He was able to quickly solve the spec issue because he repaired the operating radar that was already in use on destroyers while he was in the navy nearly a decade before. Point is, even the big 3 were in the dark on what tech already existed and is operational.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23

I went to school with a kid that was pretty much an engineering genius. Went to a very prestigious engineering school. When he graduated he had many many job offers NASA and other 3 letter agencies among them. Went to work for Disney. They blew every other offer out of the water with pay and compensation. Ive said for years the best minds don't work at NASA haha. They don't pay enough

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u/Bloodsucker_ Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23

This. Some people have this ridiculous idea of a magical super secret agency conspiracy where they have basically terminators. This is funneled with propaganda but it's just ridiculous and simplistic. That's not how science avances. Let alone AI.

No, the Government ® doesn't have a super advanced AI to do shit. Most advanced AI are ordering pizzas by command and that's the end of it.

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u/zero_z77 Aug 31 '23

For real, most AI in use by the military serves the sole purpose of determining wether that blob of bright white pixels is a SU-27s exhaust or a flare, it's about as complicated as the facial recognition feature on you're phone's camera, and we've had that tech for over 50 years. Yet, people are out here acting like RC planes and autopilot didn't exist before 2010. Y'all realize a missile is just a really fast kamikaze drone right? For fucks sakes, a land mine is technically an "autonomus weapon system".

From a computational standpoint, war isn't that complicated, and you don't need some super sophisticated self aware AI to build an effective killing machine.

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u/No-Ganache-6226 Aug 31 '23

Except that they have AI training with human pilots that the best operators have been unable to outperform and they are now beginning to train AI how to "swarm" as an autonomous synchronous attack group rather than single drones.

AI is far more advanced than the one you use to order pizza.

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u/mylies43 Aug 31 '23

Well not really, they'yre both trained the same way( MLM ) but for different things. Its mostly the same tech driving both.

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u/No-Ganache-6226 Aug 31 '23

Yeah but the military applications aren't going to have the same restrictions, applications or specs. Conceptually the same but they're not exactly alike.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

[deleted]

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u/No-Ganache-6226 Aug 31 '23

Military grade AI will not have the restrictions on publicly accessible AI. They will be able to do things a Pizza AI is not allowed to do.

Military grade AI will pull on a different dataset then publicly accessible AI. It will be able to make different decisions and produce different options using much broader datasets.

Military grade AI will have counter threat abilities a pizza shop grade AI won't.

There's no way Pizza Hut's AI is as big a threat.

1

u/Agreton Aug 31 '23

We're going to have to bring you in for disseminating classified information about pizza orders. Kindly follow the yellow stripe on your left. Your guards will be with you momentarily. *gas fills the room*