this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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The aircraft flew up to speeds of 1,200mph. DARPA did not reveal which aircraft won the dogfight.

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[–] Blue_Morpho 166 points 3 months ago (21 children)

AI will win if not now, then soon. The reason is that even if it is worse than a human, the AI can pull off maneuvers that would black out a human.

Jets are far more powerful than humans are capable of controlling. Flight suits and training can only do so much to keep the pilot from blacking out.

[–] NegativeLookBehind 45 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Jets are far more powerful than humans are capable of controlling.

I think the same will eventually be true for AI, especially when you give it weapons

[–] Kyle_The_G 45 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think theres a movie about that

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's name is Stealth, starring Jamie Foxx.

I can't believe these idiots went ahead and gave skynet a fucking jet.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Who knew such a bad movie would be such a good cautionary tale?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

EDI is a Warplane. EDI must have targets.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Maneuverability is much less of a factor now as BVR engagements and stealth have taken over.

But, yeah, in general a pilot that isn't subject to physical constraints can absolutely out maneuver a human by a wide margin.

The future generation will resemble a Protoss Carrier sans the blimp appearance. Human controllers in 5th and 6th gen airframes who direct multiple AI wingman, or AI swarms.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (11 children)

Plus the ai has no risk, outside of basic operation.

Humans have an inherent survival instinct to which drones can just say "lol send the next one I'm dying cya"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

To fight optimally, AI needs to have a survival instinct too.

Evolution didn’t settle on “protect my life at all costs” as our default instinct, simply by chance. It did so because it’s the best strategy in a hostile environment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

It's the best strategy because it takes decades to make a fully functional human, and you need humans to make more humans, plus there is the issue of genetically sustainable population sizes, etc. A fully functional aeroplane can be made much quicker, in a factory that can spit out several of them in a day. They are more expendable.

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[–] EdibleFriend 18 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Can't they literally pull turns that would snap the pilots neck?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Can anyone confirm if AI has a neck?

[–] kambusha 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My neck. My back. Lick my inputs & my headphone-jack.

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[–] essteeyou 11 points 3 months ago (3 children)

And a mouth ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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[–] BrightCandle 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not so much f16s but the more modern planes can do 16G where the pilot can't really do more than 9G. But once unshackled from a pilot a lot of instrument weight and pilot survival can be stripped from a plane design and the airframe built to withstand much more, with titanium airframes I see no reason we can't make planes do sustained unstable turns in excess of 20G.

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[–] EndOfLine 68 points 3 months ago (16 children)

In 2020, so-called "AI agents" defeated human pilots in simulations in all five of their match-ups - but the technology needed to be run for real in the air.

It did not reveal which aircraft won the dogfight.

I'm gonna guess the AI won.

[–] Glytch 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I was actually assuming the opposite, because if the AI won they'd want to brag about it.

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[–] Harbinger01173430 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Hahaha how the fuck is AI going to win in air-to-air combat if we completely delete them when playing Ace Combat in the highest difficulty?

Seethe, AI tech bros.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago (3 children)

We all know which aircraft won the fight.

Those of us who play video games do at least. All the AI difficulty settings are arbitrary. You give the bot the ability to use its full capability, and the game is unplayable.

[–] calcopiritus 30 points 3 months ago (6 children)

In video games the AI have access to all the data in the game. In real life both the human and AI have access to the same (maybe imprecise) sensor data. There are also physical limitations in the real world. I don't think it's the same scenario.

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[–] Jimmycakes 16 points 3 months ago

Plus they had humans on board the AI jet. I imagine it could pull some crazy insane Gs without the human pushing the engineering to the red line.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (13 children)

For sure without humans the AI probably wins, assuming the instruments are good. This wasn't without humans, but it probably still wins.

I'm fairly certain most dogfights happen on instruments only at this point, so I don't see a chance the human won. The AI can react faster and more aggressively. It can also almost perfectly match a G-load profile limit (which could be much higher without humans on board) where a human needs to stay a little under to not do damage.

This is all assuming the data it was given was good and comprehensive, which I'm sure it was. It also likely trained in a simulation a lot too. This is one of those things AI is great for. Anything that requires doing something new and unique it can't handle, but if it just requires executing an output based on inputs, that's a perfect use case.

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[–] KISSmyOSFeddit 44 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Are dogfights even still a thing?
I remember playing an F15 simulator 20 years ago where "dogfighting" already meant clicking on a radar blip 100 miles away, then doing something else while your missile killed the target.

[–] VindictiveJudge 24 points 3 months ago (6 children)

'Dogfighting' mostly just means air-to-air combat now. They do still make fighter jets that have guns or can mount guns, but I think they're primarily intended for surface targets rather than air targets.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago (7 children)

I am a FIRM believer in any automated kill without a human pulling the trigger is a war crime

Yes mines yes uavs yes yes yes

It is a crime against humanity

Stop

[–] antidote101 10 points 3 months ago (24 children)

What if the human is pulling the trigger to "paint the target" and tag it for hunt and destroy then the drone goes and kills it? Because that's how lots of missles already work. So where's the line?

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[–] DreamlandLividity 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

You mean it should be a war crime, right? Or is there some treaty I am unaware of?

Also, why? I don't necessarily disagree, I am just curious about your reasoning.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Not OP, but if you can't convince a person to kill another person then you shouldn't be able to kill them anyways.

There are points in historical conflicts, from revolutions to wars, when the very people you picked to fight for your side think "are we the baddies" and just stop fighting. This generally leads to less deaths and sometimes a more democratic outcome.

If you can just get a drone to keep killing when any reasonable person would surrender you're empowering authoritarianism and tyranny.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Take WWI Christmas when everyone got out of the trenches and played some football (no not American foot touches the ball 3x a game)

It almost ended the war

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[–] FlyingSquid 35 points 3 months ago (4 children)

So many downers here. I see this as the step to the true way war was meant to be fought- with giant robots on the moon.

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[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

One step closer to machine domination.

Like, not even in a joking sense. Ukraine is using a ton of drones, the future of physical warfare will simply be a test resources and production.

I'm honestly not sure if this will be good or bad in the longterm. Absolutely saving any amount of human life is a good thing, but when that is no longer a significant factor, I wonder if we will go to (and stay at) war for more trivial reasons.

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[–] unreasonabro 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

giving AI military training is "responsible", is it? Oh good, I'm glad training software to kill is going "responsibly", that's good to know. Kinda seems like the way a republican uses words - backwards, in opposition to their actual meaning, but hey, fuck the entire world, right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

If you want some sort of arms control agreement for AI, you're going to be faced with the problem of verification that countries are complying.

My guess is that that's probably very difficult to do. All you need is a datacenter somewhere and someone with expertise.

And if an arms control agreement doesn't exist, then a country not developing a promising technology just disadvantages that country.

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[–] Siegfried 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I see we are gonna take a piss on Asimov's robots rules pretty quickly

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The F-16 being flown by the AI has 3-D Thrust Vectoring.

It's an absolute beast of an aircraft.

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[–] Ghostalmedia 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)
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