A papyrus scroll that was burned and carbonized when Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago has been virtually unrolled and partially deciphered with the help of artificial intelligence.
Well when they said the Pentagon was using AI to help coordinate the attacks on Iran, I simply assumed it was some expert system with a machine learning component. But no, it turns out they were using Grok, an actual LLM chatbot. Which is fucking crazy.
So sometimes the assumption goes the other way as well.
Well, having the tools and knowing how best to use them are two different things. The fact they used an LLM to determine how to use the tools is indicative of them not being overly adept at using them. Also, the fact they got a worse outcome than relying on experts, which they should have easy access to, is typical of situations where LLMs have been used to replace experts. So you’re correct in that this single instance of LLMs doing poorly isn’t a good way to determine if it is useful (in this field), but it follows a common trend of trying to shoehorn LLMs into adjacent fields and failing spectacularly.
On a broader note, the results of a war tend to follow the better leaders. America spent 20 years at war in a large zone with very difficult goals, and easily held their own, even if they couldn’t reach the overall conditions for ultimate success. Now they are in a war with a much smaller field of activity and fairly narrowly defined goals, so should have no trouble building siege conditions to wear the opponent down, yet did it so poorly and somehow attached it to neighboring wars in such a way as to make both the goals harder to achieve and the risks to do so greater. This isn’t the fault of LLMs, but it doesn’t surprise me that someone who would do that would also turn to LLMs to help draft their battle plans after weeding out their more experienced generals.
It is common to apply new technologies to fields they have not been used before if the technology seems promising. In most cases if you have to rely on the technology you test whether it works better than your previous approach.
I am sure that the US army has resources to do such tests. Indeed, testing in house is not the same as in a real world, but assuming no tests were performed is naive and treating the largest as army in the world as an organization working like a high school student preparing the exam on the night before.
Also, the fact they got a worse outcome than relying on experts
I’m not sure why you say this, I’m afraid this kind of information only the US military has access to. They may diffuse the information because they got great results or as false flag; difficult to know what is real in these cases.
On a broader note, the results of a war tend to follow the better leaders.
War tends to be won by good strategy, tactics do play a role, but without good strategy good technologies are worthlessness. The US lost in a despicable way several wars, they did not do well in Afghanistan, and they were fighting an occupied country with no resources.The current war is a terrible thing happening, but it is not comparable. This is occupying a broken country versus attacking a developed country who has been preparing for war for many years and with a large population, with a very difensible geography. I do not know exactly why the US decided to start this war, this is not public information; however the two wars are not comparable. Even taking out of the equation the alliance with Israel and being brought into other conflicts, attacking Iran is not comparable to attacking Afghanistan.
I would not place the blame on the incompetence of the army; indeed generals had plans to attack Iran, as they do for many countries of relevance for their national. The decision to attack is of the government. The job to execute a ch attack is of the army. The idea is that the army talks to the government before the attack happens, if it difficult or impossible the army would stop the government before it happens.
I can not know what happened in this case. I don’t know whether the army was overconfident in their ability to attack or if the government ignored their advice not to attack. Their war is not doing well, but this is not necessarily the fault of the generals; if they have to fight a war they can not win it is difficult to blame them for not winning it.
Everything you say is reasonable, provided you have reasonable people in place. It is very simple to verify that many senior people left the US military in the last year and a half, someone whose last significant role prior to being promoted to secretary of defense was a media gig, and many actions with the military have been done for ideological, rather than pragmatic, reasons. The most recent that leaps to mind is the reinstating of required flu vaccinations after their current leadership discovered both that flu vaccines work pretty well and that having a significant number of sick soldiers doesn’t. Actions like those place their other decisions under scrutiny, whether that be starting the war in the first place or using an LLM to help, or perhaps entirely, create the battle plan they used.
I’m afraid we have nothing more to talk about. While I have no idea whether people working in the US military are incompetent or not, I would tend to think they are not. It appears you think the opposite. One of the two of us may be closer to the truth, however I doubt any of us actually knows.
It’s been a good chat!
I doubt the government directly manages military decisions. I’d imagine the people taking these decisions are in that position regardless of which party is at the government.
Sorry, I’m not from the US. Does that include generals and army technicians? In most countries the government does not have direct power over the internal organization of the army, I don’t know how it works in the US.
The President is the Commander in Chief of the United States military. His toady is the Sectary of Defense. And generals are being put into positions where they must violate their oaths or resign. (Presumably. We’ve had several prominent resignations — often just before apparently illegal military operations that would’ve been under their control.) SecDef refuses to promote females and people of color into high ranks. It’s a long process because the system is designed to make this difficult, so the job isn’t complete, but he had made significant progress.
To be fair, there are things he doesn’t have direct control over, but those things are largely under the control of his lackeys because trump nominates them and they serve temporarily until the Senate confirms them. But Republicans control the Senate and only the absolute worst people or those with some sense of shame aren’t confirmed.
Trump is the chief executive, so any government function that isn’t directed by the judiciary or Congress is under his leadership. Every federal enforcement branch: armed forces, fbi, CIA, regulatory bodies, education, environment, is all under his control directly or indirectly.
Well when they said the Pentagon was using AI to help coordinate the attacks on Iran, I simply assumed it was some expert system with a machine learning component. But no, it turns out they were using Grok, an actual LLM chatbot. Which is fucking crazy.
So sometimes the assumption goes the other way as well.
I’d imagine they measured metrics of other automated systems and compared with LLM and found out LLM works best.
It’s not like traditional machine learning models are suddenly perfect and work in all cases.
Looking at the results of the war in Iran, I’d suggest your assumptions are incorrect.
The results of the war do not depend solely on the quality of a single tool or weapon.
The US has better weapons overall and is not winning, thus it is not a way to discriminate whether this technology is useful or not.
Well, having the tools and knowing how best to use them are two different things. The fact they used an LLM to determine how to use the tools is indicative of them not being overly adept at using them. Also, the fact they got a worse outcome than relying on experts, which they should have easy access to, is typical of situations where LLMs have been used to replace experts. So you’re correct in that this single instance of LLMs doing poorly isn’t a good way to determine if it is useful (in this field), but it follows a common trend of trying to shoehorn LLMs into adjacent fields and failing spectacularly.
On a broader note, the results of a war tend to follow the better leaders. America spent 20 years at war in a large zone with very difficult goals, and easily held their own, even if they couldn’t reach the overall conditions for ultimate success. Now they are in a war with a much smaller field of activity and fairly narrowly defined goals, so should have no trouble building siege conditions to wear the opponent down, yet did it so poorly and somehow attached it to neighboring wars in such a way as to make both the goals harder to achieve and the risks to do so greater. This isn’t the fault of LLMs, but it doesn’t surprise me that someone who would do that would also turn to LLMs to help draft their battle plans after weeding out their more experienced generals.
It is common to apply new technologies to fields they have not been used before if the technology seems promising. In most cases if you have to rely on the technology you test whether it works better than your previous approach. I am sure that the US army has resources to do such tests. Indeed, testing in house is not the same as in a real world, but assuming no tests were performed is naive and treating the largest as army in the world as an organization working like a high school student preparing the exam on the night before.
I’m not sure why you say this, I’m afraid this kind of information only the US military has access to. They may diffuse the information because they got great results or as false flag; difficult to know what is real in these cases.
War tends to be won by good strategy, tactics do play a role, but without good strategy good technologies are worthlessness. The US lost in a despicable way several wars, they did not do well in Afghanistan, and they were fighting an occupied country with no resources.The current war is a terrible thing happening, but it is not comparable. This is occupying a broken country versus attacking a developed country who has been preparing for war for many years and with a large population, with a very difensible geography. I do not know exactly why the US decided to start this war, this is not public information; however the two wars are not comparable. Even taking out of the equation the alliance with Israel and being brought into other conflicts, attacking Iran is not comparable to attacking Afghanistan. I would not place the blame on the incompetence of the army; indeed generals had plans to attack Iran, as they do for many countries of relevance for their national. The decision to attack is of the government. The job to execute a ch attack is of the army. The idea is that the army talks to the government before the attack happens, if it difficult or impossible the army would stop the government before it happens. I can not know what happened in this case. I don’t know whether the army was overconfident in their ability to attack or if the government ignored their advice not to attack. Their war is not doing well, but this is not necessarily the fault of the generals; if they have to fight a war they can not win it is difficult to blame them for not winning it.
Everything you say is reasonable, provided you have reasonable people in place. It is very simple to verify that many senior people left the US military in the last year and a half, someone whose last significant role prior to being promoted to secretary of defense was a media gig, and many actions with the military have been done for ideological, rather than pragmatic, reasons. The most recent that leaps to mind is the reinstating of required flu vaccinations after their current leadership discovered both that flu vaccines work pretty well and that having a significant number of sick soldiers doesn’t. Actions like those place their other decisions under scrutiny, whether that be starting the war in the first place or using an LLM to help, or perhaps entirely, create the battle plan they used.
I’m afraid we have nothing more to talk about. While I have no idea whether people working in the US military are incompetent or not, I would tend to think they are not. It appears you think the opposite. One of the two of us may be closer to the truth, however I doubt any of us actually knows. It’s been a good chat!
This is the most vibe-coded democratic administration in history. They measured nothing, and fired anyone suggesting otherwise.
I doubt the government directly manages military decisions. I’d imagine the people taking these decisions are in that position regardless of which party is at the government.
That used to be the case, but they are trying to fire anyone who says anything they don’t want to hear.
Sorry, I’m not from the US. Does that include generals and army technicians? In most countries the government does not have direct power over the internal organization of the army, I don’t know how it works in the US.
The President is the Commander in Chief of the United States military. His toady is the Sectary of Defense. And generals are being put into positions where they must violate their oaths or resign. (Presumably. We’ve had several prominent resignations — often just before apparently illegal military operations that would’ve been under their control.) SecDef refuses to promote females and people of color into high ranks. It’s a long process because the system is designed to make this difficult, so the job isn’t complete, but he had made significant progress.
To be fair, there are things he doesn’t have direct control over, but those things are largely under the control of his lackeys because trump nominates them and they serve temporarily until the Senate confirms them. But Republicans control the Senate and only the absolute worst people or those with some sense of shame aren’t confirmed.
Trump is the chief executive, so any government function that isn’t directed by the judiciary or Congress is under his leadership. Every federal enforcement branch: armed forces, fbi, CIA, regulatory bodies, education, environment, is all under his control directly or indirectly.
im not an american too and may be wrong but the POTUS is the highest commander of the military.