Discussion

Probably Dance

automatic6131: This is pure delusion.Completely dry of any data, based on vibes and a vague whiff that maybe a chatbot did all the hard work done by hardworking spooks.Effective operations have happened just like this long before chatgpt launched.

A_D_E_P_T: The "article" (I don't know what else to call it; "fantastical screed"?) has also gotten ahead of events a little bit. The operation in Iran doesn't seem like it was planned by a superintelligent AI. It seems as though it was an impulse decision, and poorly thought out at that, with the end result likely to be far worse than its planners anticipated. As for Venezuela, that was literally an inside job, lol.

Matl: I perhaps get where the author is coming from at a very surface level, but the US is acting like a drunk Culture where the Minds face credible accusations of all sorts of abuse, are named something like 'I Got Small Dick, Wannu Make Everyone Think Is Big', had no goal beyond self-enrichment and ships that dumbed their human passengers into empty space with the promise that if they somehow survive the next time they come onboard, everything is going to be even more BIG, GREAT and BEAUTIFUL!So not sure I buy the analogy.

fsloth: [delayed]

yacin: not sure i'd lump Iran in with Venezuela here. also far too early for either to say if either will lead to a "win" whatever that means.

zer00eyz: The failure here is to see that the "plan" has been on the books, and being refined for well over 30 years (1979 the Shah is deposed).This is the JOB of the military... and it has been for a long time. I would think there is even modern version of "war plan red" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red ) somewhere is just short sighted.

timdiggerm: The key line "I’m getting a similar sense for the recent US foreign interventions and wars. They all seem to work slightly better than they should."There is no measurement of efficacy here. It feels like these things are working better because the US military is now doing big public things, but that is not necessarily a good change over not-doing-big-public-things.

amenhotep: Yeah, that was exactly where he lost me. The US military doesn't need a remarkable amount of luck for these operations to be tactical successes, tactical risk wasn't the reason previous administrations didn't do them. The element that was missing was a complete disregard for second order consequences, and Claude has nothing to do with that whatsoever.

wildster: Except the Culture are the good guys.

TimorousBestie: Tell that to the Idirans.

OkayPhysicist: I think the author is making a mistake assigning the seemingly new competence of the US military to AI, rather than noticing that the US has spent the last half-century or so picking the kinds of fights we absolutely suck at.Force projection, targeted aerial strikes, intelligence gathering, and a nuclear deterrent play to the US miltary's strengths. Convincing the people who we just whacked the leaders of to like us? Not at all. The US doesn't have the political will to commit the monstrous acts required to stomp out an insurgency, and we, as the big bad empire on the global stage, can't help but inspire insurgents.If you look at the boondoggles that the US has gotten itself into post Korea, they typically follow a pattern of "we show up, complete the key objectives in the first couple of days, and then spend years occupying territory while trying to root out an insurgency, creating new insurgents at least as fast as we neutralize them, then eventually limp away with our tail between our legs."Lately, we've been just doing the first part. Which is the part we've been good at for ages. No need to blame AI, it's just that we aren't / haven't gotten around to doing the part we suck at.

harperlee: A fundamental thing that this misses, I think, is that the reinforcement learning approaches of AlphaGo do generate that sensation of lack-of-narrative, everything together at the same time alien thinking, whereas using an LLM as hypothesized would have a clear tree-like approach with an overarching thesis, so the approach would be more traditional / human like.

jrowen: The analogy is about technology aiding operational efficiency. It ends there. You basically made a dramatic statement about Trump.

Matl: This behavior predates Trump. He's just an accelerationist of where this sort of behavior was always bound to go.But he does perfectly demonstrate that you can't have operational efficiency if you're ignorant about your enemies because you're being advised by religious fanatics, if your goals are constantly shifting and your motives are purely selfish.

jrowen: > This behavior predates Trump. He's just an accelerationist of where this sort of behavior was always bound to go.Idk if I agree with this. First off, your initial verbiage is distinctly Trumpian. Second, I think Trump, like Hitler, activates latent sentiments that are largely kept at bay with "normal" post-WWII world leader politics. I think it's anomalous and once we get out of it things will normalize.But really, my main point was that politics and the "whys" of these decisions (capture Maduro, bomb Iran) is outside the scope of the article. It assumes that the decisions have been made and is looking only at the operational outcomes.

soupfordummies: Can someone ELI5 how Cluade is/was being used for Venezuela & Iran?"Hey claude, tell me how the US can abduct Maduro. Your response should include all details regarding times, local places as well as blah blah blah"

jrowen: You have to have working knowledge of StarCraft and the RTS genre of games to understand what they're getting at.One area is "micromanagement." Hundreds of individual units moving and acting independently is very difficult for one human general to track, let alone react and give orders to quickly. Think more about rapid data analysis and surfacing supporting information than it being the singular mastermind behind the operation.