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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17446 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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I'm sure at least someone has considered more difficult target discrimination problems, which seem to edge closer to the "poetry" use case. "Is this language Russian or Ukrainian", or discerning between common Eastern Bloc hardware used on both sides seems relevant and difficult, especially with active countermeasures on silhouettes and shapes going on. That meme with three fingers seems relevant.

I just don't think sticking Astra or Fable (as opposed to a lightweight image processor) is the solution here.

The problem with a lightweight tool is that it can be fooled by changing small details (e.g. using Ukrainian spelling on your Russian tank). But those are exactly the same sorts of things that are going to trip up Astra, too, because it is going to be instructed to use a similar decision matrix, which, again - why not just use a lightweight image processor if you are going to give them both the same targeting library.

In many ways, I think militaries would prefer a tool that isn't doing independent reasoning to strike a target. The reason for this is pretty obvious: independent reasoning historically leads to friendly fire. At least if your independent reasoner is on the bridge of a ship (and this goes for a human or a larger AI model) and it screws up, you can figure out what happened by conducting interviews and data-dumps afterwards.

If you design a missile with an independently reasoning seeker-head and it starts friendly-firing, you may have a hard time figuring out what is going on because there may be nothing left of the malfunctioning "misaligned" system to evaluate and its reasoning may be too complex to review in a timely manner. So if something happens, you might have to yoink an entire production line of weapons and/or re-train your model in the middle of a war. If a deterministic program is friendly-firing, it means:

  • Blue-on-blue employment, which isn't the fault of the model
  • Threat library incorrectly calibrated
  • Target determination software incorrectly calibrated

All of which are probably easier to figure out and patch during an active conflict than "what is going on with Astra" - witness the difficulties the AI companies are having following chain-of-thought now, when they have total access and control over the models.

I am not saying that we will never get the fabled "self-aware weapons system" from AI, and I wouldn't be surprised if testing is done relatively soon. But in the current threat environment, it strikes me as buying a sledgehammer to kill a fly.

That's not to say that LLMs have no military value at all. I just don't think they are optimized for weapons guidance.

Those sorts of targeting concerns are strictly new: there are plenty of WWII accounts of poorly-designed torpedos swimming in circles back toward their launchers. But they are valid concerns, and there are better IFF techniques (not AI) available for that sort of thing.

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