AI Downs 'Top Gun' Pilot In Dogfights (dailymail.co.uk) 441
schwit1 writes from a report via Daily Mail: [Daily Mail reports:] "The Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by retired USAF Colonel Gene Lee -- who holds extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable fighter aircraft expertise. He took on the software in a simulator. Lee was not able to score a kill after repeated attempts. He was shot out of the air every time during protracted engagements, and according to Lee, is 'the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date.'" And why is the US still throwing money at the F35, unless it can be flown without pilots. The AI, dubbed ALPHA, features a genetic fuzzy tree decision-making system, which is a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system breaks larger tasks into smaller tasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. It can calculate the best maneuvers in various, changing environments over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink. Lee says, "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."
Unsurprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely unsurprising since game bots have been able to outmaneuver human players for decades now. The only thing game bots were lacking was adequate sensor input to gain area awareness in the real world without oversimplified preprocessed maps and precisely placed path nodes.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
I've yet to see any form of public transit without windows. People wouldn't ride it.
No fresh air, let windows become virtual (Score:3)
I've yet to see any form of public transit without windows. People wouldn't ride it.
Windows will become virtual. Your display can show you a movie, news, stock charts, etc or the outside world. And to be honest, imho, if the windows don't open to let in some air then virtual might not be that bad. Well, assuming, you are only a passenger and are not expected to take control of the vehicle at some point.
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Elevator.
Re: Unsurprising (Score:3)
Well, yeah. I enjoy looking out. It's mesmerising. I've tried to check out movies and such, but of all the provided entertainment in the end I choose to see the map or forward / below cam or such.
I think what's happening outside is more interesting. It's a unique experience of the world we are living in, however dull it might feel.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Informative)
Cars will have no windows. Why, if you could watch Netflix instead?
So will these cars of yours have vomit receptacles built in too? Motion sickness will start to become a more common problem without windows.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Funny)
Motion sickness will start to become a more common problem without windows.
I thought I was the only one with that first reaction to Linux.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Billboards and other sources of ambiguous sensory input will be banned from roads.
When drivers don't have to look at their own dashboard, they are more likely to look at billboards and other sources of ambiguous sensory input.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the kaur (the user you were responding to) is wrong, buses and airplanes have windows you can open to watch the interesting and colorful world go by - in addition to window shades if you want to watch Netflix - it will be your choice. But you are also wrong, you already surrender control to a computer when it lands the commercial aircraft you are riding in. You even surrender control to your ABS brakes (occasionally) in your car which make better and faster decisions than you can about which ONE of your four car wheels to brake 10 times a second.
I see a bright happy future where I am actively enjoying the scenery and actively suggesting to the car where to go, but the car will "kick in" and avoid running over a small child or deer in the road faster than my human reflexes could manage. In my 35 years of driving (every day commuter here) I still managed to let my attention waiver once and got in a minor accident (my fault).The average driver gets in 3 or 4 accidents, so I think I'm still "above average" in my driving, but some day a computer will be able to do better than I can in avoiding accidents. I look forward to the help.
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It's quite possible that windowless airplanes would be somewhat cheaper. After all, those windows are not trivial (see de Havilland Comet). But cue the human claustrophobia...
Sort of fixed, and already in the wild . . . https://www.virgin.com/richard... [virgin.com]
Re: Unsurprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Typical 'futurist' article complete with over the top superlatives and everything. Predicting the demise of humans in yet another field where nobody actually wants that. Countermeasures to things will always exist and the fun part about countermeasures to 'artificial intelligence' is that when you have one the entirety of the enemy's systems are cooked. Look at what happened when our last one trick pony the F-117 has it's stealth penetrated. The entire platform became useless.
Maybe, and here's a concept
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
G-force limits, too (Score:5, Interesting)
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This was in an episode of Airwolf, where Stringfellow has to fight another helicopter piloted by a computer. The "unfortunate" passengers (badguys) in the AICopter were killed by the G-forces inflicted on them by the machine as is disregarded their safety to try to win the dogfight.
Re:G-force limits, too (Score:5, Funny)
Hybrid solution, though not something I'd want to sign up for...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You irritated the "my brain is magic" crowd and earned a Troll mod. Thanks for making Slashdot a better place.
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Nope. Just don't put them in the plane.
Re: Unsurprising (Score:4, Informative)
If the drone can pull 20G turns, it's game over for the human pilot.
How much dogfighting do you imagine will ever happen? Most combat will remain missile combat. Getting missile lock against your opponent's stealth before he does likewise will decide who wins most fights, and the pilot has little to do with that.
Fighters becoming an anachronism, like horse cav (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of people overinterpret the lessons of the Korean war where missiles were overstressed versus the technology of the time... and have taken it as some universal lesson which will apply forever into the future, that close-range dogfighting will always be the most critical aspect of aircraft design.
Vietnam not Korea. Personally I expect the AI to go into the missiles not the aircraft. Fighters becoming a romantic anachronism, like horse cavalry. And like horse cavalry they will last longer than people expect. My local National Guard unit is cavalry, reconnaissance, and had horse as late as the 1930s. In certain terrain guys sneaking around on horse was still more effective than vehicles. They were just the eyes for armored formations and not expect to fight themselves. Sort of like modern Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, if you are firing your weapons something has gone terribly wrong. Note some US Special Forces briefly operated as cavalry in Afghanistan. I believe the US Marines sometimes use dirt bikes. Recon may also be a role for repurposed fighters. Actually it has been such a role, removing guns an armor and adding cameras. Sometime there are gaps with satellite and drone coverage and a fast mover flying low and masking its approach with terrain fills that gap. A role not unlike that 1930s horse cavalry role, eyes, not direct combat.
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The big advantage of a pilot over a drone is that you can't jam or spoof a pilot. Same reason that wire-guided ATGMs remain a major player in modern battlefields.
Re:Fighters becoming an anachronism, like horse ca (Score:4, Interesting)
he big advantage of a pilot over a drone is that you can't jam or spoof a pilot.
How does that apply when you're engaging outside of visual range? Even in a "dogfight with guns" the HUD is showing the pilot where and when to shoot. For other missions, sure, that's relevant, but not so much for air-to-air.
The main thing the pilot adds is judgement that can't be jammed or spoofed in a situation short of war. Is that incoming plane attacking, or an airliner on an unfortunate approach? You need eyeballs on the target, and humans are better than cameras for that in a situation when hostility is unlikely.
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"She served in numerous combat actions during the Korean War, carrying supplies and ammunition, and was also used to evacuate wounded. Learning each supply route after only a couple of trips, she often traveled to deliver supplies to the troops on her own, without benefit of a handler. The highlight of her nine-month military career came in late March 1953 during the Battle for Outpost Vegas when, in a single day, she made 51 solo trips to re
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Better yet, if it's so good then put that AI in a long-range surface-to-air missile. Why bother with fighter jets with all their constraints (self-preservation?!?) and extra baggage (landing gear?!? runways?!?) when you can just fire-and-forget from the back of a pickup truck?
Re: Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Because fighter jets can fire more than one missile, have counter measures, and other weaponry which might be of use. They are also inherently reusable.
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Because you could not possible just fire more than one long range missile now could you. As far as other weapons we don't exactly strife people in fields very often. Usually you employ long range artillery to soften up a target like that.
Fighters are to valuable, and can't really carry much ordinance, the the multiple missile argument is a little silly. When it comes to defeating missile shields and intercept systems is quantity not quality. In terms of a cost effective means of attack its probably che
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As far as other weapons we don't exactly strife people in fields very often. Usually you employ long range artillery to soften up a target like that.
You say that like an Air Force Puke, I suppose you also think the F35 can replace the A10 too! Truth is the fight we are most likely to be forced into is more like another Afganistan than a WW III get used to it.
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You say that like an Air Force Puke, I suppose you also think the F35 can replace the A10 too! Truth is the fight we are most likely to be forced into is more like another Afganistan than a WW III get used to it.
But the GP wasn't talking about CAS, he was talking about replacing strike fighters. Sure, keep the A10s and the people that fly them to support humans on the ground. But instead of sending in a bunch AI-controled fighters in with AGMs or to support a bunch of AI-bombers, why not ditch the air frames altogether? The $billions you spend developing, procuring, and supporting those aircraft can buy a whole lot of theater-wide cruise missiles. Put your gee-whiz AI on the missile instead: it doesn't care tha
Re: Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes you don't know how many targets there are until you're near the target.
Sometimes you need to use additional missiles if the first wasn't sufficient and can't afford the non-trivial flight time for a second launch.
Sometimes you want to go home without blowing things up and without wasting 1.6M USD.
There are advantages to having a reusable launch platform in the area, whether that be a UAV or a strike fighter.
Re: Unsurprising (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, most missiles don't actually have that much maneuvering capability. They are usually solid-fuel boosters so you can't throttle the thrust significantly and their tiny winglets are more to keep them stabilized than to help them turn (in fact, most missiles only have an initial boost and then glide the rest of the way to their target). It's a commonly used trope in Hollywood to have missiles unerringly follow the Ace Hero Fighter Pilot as he does Immelmans and S-turns and daringly weaves through the narrow canyon with the missile just seconds behind, but that is nothing like real life. A missile's main advantage is its speed; it closes on you faster than you can maneuver out of its vision cone, but if you manage that you've usually beaten the weapon. Ground-to-air missiles are even more limited because so much of their thrust is wasted just getting the weapon up to speed and altitude.
It is possible to make a missile that could be more aggressive (longer thrust, better maneuverability), but this would drive the cost up of the weapon significantly; you would essentially be building a kamikaze aircraft, which is an expensive way to take down another plane. If you are going to make an autonomous drone with that sort of chase capability, better to make it re-usable and then hang cheaper, stupider weapons off of /that/.
Perhaps the future is fighters carrying drones carrying missiles? ;-)
Re: Unsurprising (Score:4, Interesting)
My uncle flew reconnaissance F4s in Viet Nam and he has a copy of a belly camera photo taken by another pilot as he dodged a SAM. He rolled his plane just right and the camera captured the missile flying by.
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Plus, most missiles don't actually have that much maneuvering capability. They are usually solid-fuel boosters so you can't throttle the thrust significantly and their tiny winglets are more to keep them stabilized than to help them turn (in fact, most missiles only have an initial boost and then glide the rest of the way to their target). I
The bird I worked on the Hawk [wikipedia.org] hit mach 2.4 and the G limiters were set north of 9Gs, good luck with that. Russian Missile in that era didn't have G limiters and a hard jink on the stick would break them in half, they also didn't self-destruct on power lose or end-of-flight so missing the target meant a live warhead hit the ground. The Hawk launched from a zero length launcher so it's zero to Mach time was insane. The only possible escape from a HAWK was to stay deep in the weeds and hope you get lost in the
Re: Unsurprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Just...no. There is a fixed amount of energy available to airborne objects in a dogfight, and most of it comes from the initial velocities of the objects at the start of the encounter. Think of it like a mana pool for your caster class -- missiles just sip it while fighters gulp it down. Each new vector acquired by an aircraft or missile bleeds off available energy, so encounters are necessarily brief. And missiles have another big advantage that is energy related: You can always fire another missile, which starts with a refreshed mana pool. The fighter's mana pool never gets refreshed.
So...the push to make fighters more maneuverable was to evade missile threats from the ground and air. Forward canards, vectored thrust, and variable geometry wings were developed to decrease the amount of energy required for a given change in vector required to defend against missiles, whose significantly smaller mass moment arms (four orders of magnitude smaller) made them inherently more maneuverable. And while it is (read: was) true that defeating the first several generations of missiles was possible by knowing and evading their ever-increasing sensor cone, that is most emphatically no longer the case, and hasn't been for a decade. During my time at the rocket ranch in the late nineties-early 2000s, I saw videos of Russian air-to-air weapons systems that made the fighter types in the briefings gulp in dismay. Passive (stealth) and active ECM are the only ways we have of defeating these current threats if we insist on having big, energy gulping objects that need to defend against smaller, more maneuverable objects that only sip at the available energy pool.
And don't discount the notion of disposability -- missiles, after all, are by definition disposable. But a kinetic kill doesn't necessarily mean that *both* objects have to be destroyed in a given encounter. A hypersonic missile equipped with a chaff ejector stuffed with depleted uranium ball bearings instead of magnesium can deliver enough energy against the cockpit of a fighter (structurally the weakest point because of human pilots' need to see with their own eyes) to guarantee a kill (literally, in this case.) And it probably still has enough energy to find and attack another target or three, effectively nullifying your kamikaze-aircraft-is-too-expensive disposability argument.
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Let the B-52s launch Harpy/Harop/Delilah/Cutlass outside of LOS, out of reach. Or off ships, where they can also defend.
We re not far from a theater where there are so many devices in action you can't tell which is what threat, and a bogey can be a ship-killer, AAM, AGM, anything. Or all three.
Then the solution is to EMP or air nuke blast them to literally clear the air. Collateral damage means holding troops back until the environment is safe, which hopefully is measured in hours or days... Unless you
Re: Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you realise that modern military aircraft *already* identify targets on radar and through the HUD, and present them to the pilot as such? The onboard avionics already highlight to the pilot the ideal point at which to shoot (literally, on the F/A-18 the box on the HUD turns from a square to a diamond and presents the word "SHOOT" underneath it).
Onboard avionics targeting systems are already advanced beyond the state which you think they lack.
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Are you suggesting that they point a camer at the HUD?
The data's already in digital form. Instead of feeding it to a display panel feed it straight to the AI. Controls are fly-by-wire anyway, so why pass it through an expensive and delicate carbon unit?
Re: Unsurprising (Score:4, Interesting)
On radar you don't need pattern recognition.
It tells you exactly where the object is and after three "blibs" exactly what course it is going.
Cameras and pattern recognition are fast enough since decades on mediocre hardware.
Also: AIs kill human pilots in air combat since 20 years or longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (not about air combat but AI/AL)
Those Norns where bred in an UK university in the late 1990s and were basically unbeatable in air combat. A bit strange that news about the topic is on /. today. It is pretty old news. It was not actually Norns, but a sister "species", forgot their name.
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We can, Google have one. It is getting people to understand its use that is the problem.
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So it will be that the dreams of getting rid of humans will die a cold death in the various parents' basements where these futurists live.
Humans doing less dangerous and menial jobs is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Re: Unsurprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Humans doing less dangerous and menial jobs is a good thing, not a bad thing.
That's dogmatic, and not necessarily true.
I would think that humans doing dangerous things for which there are rewards[*] helps provide an evolutionary pressure against those not doing dangerous things, and those failing at them.
[*]: Primary, as in winning wars, or secondary, as in being better paid than average or attracting more mates.
That you can toss a wrapper into the wastebin from across the room, that you can walk for miles, and that you can balance on a bike are likely all because of your ancestors doing dangerous things. It paid off.
As for menial tasks, the same applies, Being good at those too lends an advantage.
We have this big thing on top of our necks, and really complicated protein factory patterns. We can afford to be good at a lot of things, much more so than most of our cousin species. But that's only to our advantage if we do become good at things, and fill that squishy bulb.
I firmly believe that that includes doing both dangerous and menial things.
Which is why I'm now getting into my car, challenging death on the county road to do menial tasks like benchmarking at work. Have a nice day!
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Humans doing less dangerous and menial jobs is a good thing, not a bad thing.
That's dogmatic, and not necessarily true.
I would think that humans doing dangerous things for which there are rewards[*] helps provide an evolutionary pressure against those not doing dangerous things, and those failing at them.
[*]: Primary, as in winning wars, or secondary, as in being better paid than average or attracting more mates.
That you can toss a wrapper into the wastebin from across the room, that you can walk for miles, and that you can balance on a bike are likely all because of your ancestors doing dangerous things. It paid off.
As for menial tasks, the same applies, Being good at those too lends an advantage.
We have this big thing on top of our necks, and really complicated protein factory patterns. We can afford to be good at a lot of things, much more so than most of our cousin species. But that's only to our advantage if we do become good at things, and fill that squishy bulb.
I firmly believe that that includes doing both dangerous and menial things.
Which is why I'm now getting into my car, challenging death on the county road to do menial tasks like benchmarking at work. Have a nice day!
Knowledge can't be passed down between generations, it's inherited. I'm not able to walk because my grandfather was made to walk in WW1 and died doing it. I can walk because I have legs. It has nothing to with putting people into dangerous situations that can be avoided. Of course there are dangerous situations where the person wants to be there, but that's a different thing. I'm not saying don't let them. But would any coal mine workers want to be in the mine, if it wasn't for a wage slave predicament?
Peop
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You're able to walk because your great-times-n grandfather did something dangerous, namely coming down from the trees.
Maybe n isn't so large, given this gem.
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Knowledge can't be passed down between generations, it's inherited.
You can read, can't you? Was that inherited?
I'm not able to walk because my grandfather was made to walk in WW1 and died doing it. I can walk because I have legs.
You can walk because an ancestor of yours climbed down from a tree, and dared cross the plain to find food or get away from predators. Those staying behind, or dying crossing the plain didn't get to propagate their genes. And those who dared hunt big animals, trusting that they could catch them or run away if needed. Repeat thousands of times, and evolution paid the ultimate reward to those who had mutations making walking more functional.
Your talk about WWI s
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Unfortunately ... helps provide an evolutionary pressure ... [*]: Primary, as in winning wars, or secondary, as in being better paid than average or attracting more mates. this does not generate genetic pressure.
Actually there is no such thing as "genetic pressure".
Bottom line it is about who breeds faster, or breeds before he dies.
You can wipe out the gene pool of some brows or yellows with Napalm and Nukes: that has no affect at all on your gene pool.
Pretty dumb to think otherwise.
Getting some of the yell
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First off, modern humans are no longer under any meaningful evolutionary pressure, other than perhaps traits which contribute to male or female infertility. Almost everyone who wants children can have them unless they are infertile. Secondly, modern humans will be capable of genetic engineering very soon from an evolutionary point of view. It may be a decade, it may be 200 years, but almost no evolutionary changes would happen in either time frame. Once that happens natural selection will no longer play any
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Sure we do. Look at all those guys in WWII who died before they had kids. Or all the jocks who manage to die in high school or college.
Larry Niven has written science fiction stories about alien species starting human wars in order to try and breed a more docile human species. We still have evolutionary pressure. It's just in the opposite direction the OP thinks it is.
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You might not want to replace humans with computers even if computers are superior at the task, but if you don't, your fighters have a disadvantage against any enemy who will - and that disadvantage is only going to get larger with time since computers advance faster than humans evolve. The "god of war" makes the decisions, you obey or die. That's the true nature of a world driven by competition: everyone has their choice
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Simulations and the decision to fire (Score:2, Insightful)
It was only a matter of time, computers are able to keep complete situational awareness while analyzing what the target is doing.
Umm, you are aware that this is a SIMULATION, not the real world, right? We're not talking about a real jet with a real AI in real combat conditions. Yeah, computer can beat people in games - we've been able to do that for a long time. Not at all the same thing as a real world fight in conditions where the rules of engagement are unclear, the political situation is fraught, and the decision to fire is difficult. We put humans as pilots as much for their decision making abilities as we do their ability t
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Yes, we are a very long way from letting these things operate completely autonomously, but they don't need to. The drones can be operated remotely by human operators, then once the decision has been made to engage a target the drone switches over to automatic for the actual combat.
Combat is messier than that (Score:2)
Yes, we are a very long way from letting these things operate completely autonomously, but they don't need to.
We should NEVER let these things operated with complete autonomy. Ever. Doing so is both unethical and a bad idea for very practical reasons as well.
The drones can be operated remotely by human operators, then once the decision has been made to engage a target the drone switches over to automatic for the actual combat.
Actual combat isn't a simple thing that you can switch on and off. It's messier than that. Giving complete autonomy to a drone at any point is a highly questionable idea because your ability to retake control may be out of your hands. Once the bullet leaves the chamber it's pretty hard to bring it back. Real combat isn't like a video game where you have n
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Isn't that even more reason to use AI planes? They are, after all, expendable. You can afford to lose them at whatever rate the factories can manufacture them without having to worry about lost lives or grieving families.
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To me, this is like those quadcopters that can play ping-pong - in a perfectly known environment; in the case of the copters, with fixed tracking cameras all around the room.
Getting that kind of total situational awareness in the field, with smoke and chaff and hostile signals in the air, can be more challenging. To paraphrase young Solo: "Good in a simulation, that's one thing, good in the real world, that's something else."
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The Star Wars drone armies controlled from a single mothership are, of course, rubbish. Real systems developed in real battlefield environments would have considerable autonomy and redundancy.
Or, if you want to look at it this way, meat bags have one fatal flaw, just fling a bunch of hot metal through the air and they all fall over screaming, mostly dead within seconds.
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Flexibility, that's what you need humans for.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects."
-- "Lazarus Long" (Robert A. Heinlein)
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy for Author Mouthpiece Lazarus Long to say, since he's a Marty Stu with Immortality.
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He thinks it's still 1940. Like half of the British electorate.
Prevent the Software From Bein Subverted (Score:5, Funny)
So maintaining air superiority now becomes an IT security issue.
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God help us all...
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I've seen that film... (Score:3)
...it doesn't end well.
"He took on the software in a simulator" (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: he took on the software in its version of reality, with it either being omniscient or having a perfect model of its sensors' deficiencies. While having to work with its presentation of its reality filtered through its presentation devices, limiting the information available to everything the simulator builders considered important enough to bother with and which are actually physically presentable (good luck with proper accelerations, for example).
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You are right, this is a threat to the validity. However, it is still impressive. Furthermore, you do not know if the simulation included perfect sensors for the AI. This could have been fixed in the simulation by a module which provides sensor issues and physics. Also it is usually not possible to use real planes, as those can only be shot down once and they are kind of expensive, i.e., not in the range of a doctoral candidate budget.
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TFA indicated it wasn't a perfect simulation, and even with handicaps the AI still handily beat out the human.
It also indicated that the human pilot was not the best, having first been promoted to not flying, and then retired.
And then put in a situation where the familiar cues of flying were missing, like feeling G-forces and gravity.
This was never meant to be a fair fight. It was meant to attract financing by showing a concept, and at the same time winning over the less critical thinking (i.e. politicians) by having a "win".
This was well orchestrated and well performed. Now let's see if it opens the drawstrings.
Re:"He took on the software in a simulator" (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know why you are surprised that the computer is better. Aside from anything else, it will be able to push the aircraft to the absolute limit of performance without blacking out due to G forces. All modern jets rely on computers to distil sensor data down to something that the pilot can process at a much slower rate than the machine can anyway.
The simulators are pretty good actually. They spend a lot of effort making the computer controlled opponents realistic in terms of sensor capability. If anything the human has an advantage here, since acceleration induced blackouts are not simulated.
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You're desperate to make any excuse you can, huh? Your translation demonstrates you probably don't know what you're talking about. This is not a copy of Flight Simulator running on a 14" CRT with a Logitech Wingman Extreme.
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Re:"He took on the software in a simulator" (Score:4, Informative)
Translation: he took on the software in its version of reality, with it either being omniscient or having a perfect model of its sensors' deficiencies.
After boats (which got autopilots very early on) aircraft are literally the easiest vehicle piloting job for AI for a broad array of reasons. The sensor package is one of the most compelling; they really know where they are, and what they are doing. Some literally $1 accelerometers will tell you the vast majority of what you need to know to keep a plane in the air.
It should not shock anyone that an AI would be a better combat pilot than a human, especially when it comes to stuff like leading shots.
Tracking a target with a camera and making a visual estimation of its heading is not that hard any more, again, especially of aircraft which we've been spotting first with our eyes and then with software since they have existed. We have rather complex and expensive spying programs designed to tell us where military aircraft are and what they are doing. And aircraft don't go backwards, and they don't stop in mid-air, etc. What they are up to is a lot easier to estimate than other types of vehicle, again, besides boats.
Blue pill (Score:2)
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Sorry pal you cannot get back into the simulation. Out is out. After taking the red pill you are out.
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Well... you can ask to be let back in. But you'll probably have to lubricate a piston.
Yukikaze (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why are we still using Human Pilots? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh and Skynet!!!
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It's actually "good PR" to have pilots in the planes... shows we care enough to risk a man's life to do the task. Now, when the "manned" planes start flying with mannequins in the pilot's seat...
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Automated war would be far more palatable if we strapped the idiot politicians who get us into wars into the passenger seats of our killbots.
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Because when we automate war and remove the risk of losses on our side, it becomes too easy to just throw more robots into a situation.
We are only robots or slaves to the elite who send us to war anyway, so no. That's not really a valid argument. The only reason we're not using robotic pilots right now is that they're not as reliable as humans. That's changing.
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How about the person that started the war gets executed if their side loses?
That seems to be common practice. But it doesn't seem to have much of a deterrent effect.
This is much like capital punishment, and for much the same reasons. See, the criminals and megalomaniacs don't think they'll draw the short straw. What the advertised punishment is, is thus irrelevant.
Because you'll never stop a megalomaniac from being what he is, you have to target the followers. It is possible to convince them, because some of them do have a workable mind, even though critical thinking is unwelc
AIs don't have G-force limits (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse than that: the AI in this test won when piloting evenly matched planes. But the weak point in modern fighter jet design is the squishy fragile thing in the cockpit, which can't take more than 8 g-s or so, and not even close to that for negative g-forces. Get rid of the pilot, and you can design a plane whose performance is vastly better than a piloted plane. Now put that AI in it and send it head-to-head against an F-35. No contest.
Re:AIs don't have G-force limits (Score:4, Insightful)
The airframes can't take 8G either. You take a modern fighter jet fresh off the assembly line, put it through several 8G turns, and you've just drastically shortened the service life. High G turns create a huge amount of stress on the metal and if you keep making them, the wings will crack and fall off just like a WWI biplane.
So you can stuff that "pilot can't take it" line, it's partially true but not really why they don't allow fighter planes to go above 4-5G unless it's wartime.
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The airframes can't take 8G either.
So they'll use the techniques BMW used to mass-produce the i3 to make carbon fiber drones that can take even more. Taking the pilot out of the equation saves volume that lets you make the craft smaller, and then you benefit from square-cube law instead of getting fucked by it.
Not a real world test (Score:5, Insightful)
He took on the software in a simulator.
So he was fighting in a computer game, not in a real jet and certainly not in real combat conditions. This is a limited scenario with limited conditions. Keep this in mind.
And why is the US still throwing money at the F35, unless it can be flown without pilots.
See above. There is a HUGE difference between a computer game and flying a real jet in combat conditions. We've had computer "AI" (using the term loosely) that could beat people at games for a long time. That isn't the same thing as having an AI that is ready for real world combat and it is even further from having an AI that is trustworthy on decisions of whether to shoot or not. To the best of my knowledge we do not presently nor are we likely to any time soon have an AI that we can or should trust to make judgements about what to shoot or when to shoot it. It's not clear to me that we ever can or should take humans out of that loop. It might be necessary to take them out of the vehicle physically (what with us being bags of fluid and all) but we'd be idiots to trust any current AI with complete control of combat.
Furthermore an F35 does a lot more than just dog fighting. In fact its primary role is likely to be air to ground combat far more often than air to air. That's why they call it a Strike Fighter. I'm not moving the goal posts here either. Yes it is reasonable that a computer AI could outperform a human in air combat maneuvering. Especially when the jet doesn't have a human on board with the physical limitations of a human, particularly in relation to G forces. We've had jets for decades that can generate more g forces than a human can handle and we've had to artificially limit them. The problem is that we still need humans in the loop for decision making and for the most part that is a good thing. Even our drones don't shoot automatically because we cannot trust them to make appropriate firing decisions in most cases.
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Humans are out of the loop in planetary exploration, and most near Earth satellite work. Should humans always be involved in shoot-to-kill decisions? The writers of RoboCop 2014 think so.
Humans are very much in the loop (Score:2)
Humans are out of the loop in planetary exploration, and most near Earth satellite work.
No they are not. The humans issue the instructions and the computer on the remote vehicle executes them. The fact that there is some pretty severe latency on the execution of the instructions doesn't change anything. The robots aren't making any decisions about what to explore. Even far from Earth probes like New Horizons were simply executing a series of pre-programmed steps in a sequence determined by people and humans have been in communication with it since day one.
Should humans always be involved in shoot-to-kill decisions?
Yes. Absolutely yes. It is uneth
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Humans are out of the loop in planetary exploration, and most near Earth satellite work.
No they are not. The humans issue the instructions and the computer on the remote vehicle executes them. The fact that there is some pretty severe latency on the execution of the instructions doesn't change anything. The robots aren't making any decisions about what to explore. Even far from Earth probes like New Horizons were simply executing a series of pre-programmed steps in a sequence determined by people and humans have been in communication with it since day one.
A question of degrees. In 1969, human pilots were required, zero lag, for docking maneuvers... today, that can be fully automated. The extra-planetary probes make considerable decisions autonomously... we send a general instruction, they execute, but the instructions we send are becoming higher and higher level all the time. At some point, we may be sending a robot factory with general instructions to build enough robots to terraform 1000 sq km of surface for agriculture and deploy them to do that; those
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To the best of my knowledge we do not presently nor are we likely to any time soon have an AI that we can or should trust to make judgements about what to shoot or when to shoot it.
That argument is ridiculous in every way because we do not have human pilots that we trust to make judgements about what to shoot or when to shoot it. They have to get permission before they engage an attacker, and they are given their ground targets before they even take off.
EDI is the whole idea (Score:2)
I've seen this movie.
tower this is ghost rider requesting a flyby (Score:2)
tower this is ghost rider requesting a flyby
Most A/A kills result from not being seen (Score:5, Interesting)
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For current mission profiles, ALPHA’s red forces are handicapped with shorter range missiles and a reduced missile payload than the blue opposing forces. ALPHA also does not have airborne warning and control system (AWACS) support providing 360 long range radar coverage of the area; while blue does have AWACS. The aircraft for both teams are identical in terms of their mechanical performance. While ALPHA has detailed knowledge of its own systems, it is given limited intelligence of the blue force a priori and must rely on its organic sensors for situational awareness (SA) of the blue force; even the number of hostile forces is not given
Unanswered question... (Score:2)
How well does the AI perform against rules of engagement, or will it blindly fire at any object or structure because it identified a threat being in said object or structure?
"Why?" Because corruption (Score:2)
So the same criminals that we're paying a king's ransom to in order to develop an aircraft that may not be able to dogfight effectively in real life (limited ammo supply for machine gun = don't miss!) will be able to charge us a second king's ransom to add the AI flight capability later.
Military Contractor Business Plan Principle #1: Don't "volunteer" anything. If the customer wants a feature after the contract is alrea
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with expending all your chaff during a dogfight so the AI no longer has a definite lock on your fighter (& its orientation), leaving you with some chances at pegging the cheating bastard.
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The reason that money is being thrown at the F35 is because Lockheed like money, and know where to sprinkle loose change to get the best returns.
And the fact that multiple general officers (and other up and coming senior officers) probably staked their legacy and reputation on the success of the F-35. Because of course a general's career is much more important than the life of a couple of junior officers should the US ever actually need/use the F-35 in a real air-to-air combat situation (CAS against current US foes isn't too risky, and the F-35 sucks at it anyway; the A-10 is so much better but of course it's not as sexy).
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Would you? Because I'd use that massive wealth to provide people with bread and circuses and invest the rest to developing promising new technologies, such as renewables, AI and space travel, so I'd keep my grip on power and have a population base necessary for decent culture and science pr
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Part of the whole point of the F-35 is that it's just the opposite, that it requires significantly less support than aircraft like the Raptor. Which is part of how it's justified its high pricetag - that it'll be cheaper to keep going in the field. To pick an example, all of the Slashdotters that complain about it not being as fast as various other aircraft due to its single engine design. But that single engine design, in addition to helping ke