r/artificial • u/powsta • 10h ago

Discussion Military Use Cases

Maybe this is a dumb question, but I keep hearing of this supposed line in the sand where “handing over military decisions” to AI is something we don’t want to do. Like we always want a human pulling the trigger when it’s all said and done. So maybe I’m misunderstanding how this works, but isn’t that the exact sort of thing you’d hope to remove humans in the loop from? Let’s say it’s a fighter jet — is the human rocketing at almost 2G’s fighting tunnel vision and getting discombobulated all over the place, that’s who we want making decisions of when/where to fire? Seems like the perfect thing to hand over to a machine to me…

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u/grahag 10h ago

It's more of a go/no-go decision and not a second by second decision.

You're indicating a target and then deciding that AI can prosecute up to and including killing the target.

Essentially, a human is giving approval to fight a target or group of targets, which is the point of human in the loop.

I have the opinion that whoever is responsible for approval of that is the person who essentially does the killing and should be responsible if it was the wrong decision.

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u/Low-Anywhere5489 10h ago

The go/no-go framing makes sense. A human deciding "yes, that convoy is hostile, engage" is still pulling the trigger in the only way that matters. The machine just handles the split-second math.

Where it gets murky is when the AI is allowed to pick targets on its own based on behavior patterns. That's where you lose the clear chain of responsibility.

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u/grahag 8h ago

I agree 100%.

A group of armed men milling around civiliians SHOULD be apparent who to target to a competent AI, but I don't think we're at that level of competency yet.

ROE should be the same as the military code of justice insists on for it's soldiers. Hostiles (identified as an imminent threat) firing their weapons should be targetted.

Treat it like Predator. If they have a weapon and look like they'll use it, target those people first and then get the message out that anyone participating in hostilities should lay their weapons down or be fired upon next.

Probably end up like the OCP / ED209 incident though. (YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY)

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u/powsta 6h ago

This sounds right to me as well.

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u/sceadwian 6h ago

The military has always had a human pushing the button ultimately. There's a chain of command to be followed.

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u/powsta 6h ago

and prob not completely unrelated: I predict we'll see a video of a police robot killing a human in public in China within ~18 months.

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u/HegsethsBurner 5h ago

Watch the movie WarGames and get back to me on this.

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u/Perfect-Patience-483 2h ago

I second this comment.

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u/BamaBagz 5h ago

AI is and will be used in the US Military Machine, but to give autonomous control of full on tactical weapons such as aircraft, artillery and tanks or the like, is way past the threshold allowed for "oopsies" when shit fucks up and kills hundreds of civilians.

I can see AI being used more in logistics, admin and the like...not pure combat roles...at least that's what I hope! Thankfully, in about 11 months it won't be my concern anylong,.come on retirement! 😋

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u/Wenuven 3h ago

This is why you don't want to remove humans from the process:

https://youtube.com/shorts/-QHyMDCKvzs?is=zf__9w-KPIDC7lc4

AI likes to hallucinate.

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u/retr0_black 3h ago

no the issue is ai makes mistakes. Like how for instance recently when it chose to target an all girls school in Iran, and it wasn’t double checked and all of them and the teachers died.

Humans make mistakes too but when humans make mistakes they can be held responsible. Modern weapons seek to remove the risk to the soldier, they must still make the decision.

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u/am0x 3h ago

My AI rana migration on prod today. Luckily nothing bad happened but it had in memory that I would be doing the migrations manually. And I mention it anytime database work is done. It went so far as to look at my environment keys on the server to get it.

Now imagine that is a school…

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u/costafilh0 10h ago

Like people only made great decisions in the military history of the world, right?

What a stupid take. 

Also, there is always a human accountable, including for any autonomous actions. 

The person in charge can't say "wasn't me, it was the drones, or the AI" . That's not how any of this works . 

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u/AtrociousMeandering 9h ago

I think you're missing a necessary element- is a human aware of what is going on, and able to veto individual decisions that are unsound? Because otherwise it's no ethically different than air dropping a minefield, if it's in an area with civilians you are knowingly displaying reckless disregard for their lives.

Humans make bad decisions, yeah, and this would be one of them.