All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

• asdfman123

  today at 8:24 PM

  Updated to reflect modern realities:

  > In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet lobbyists descend upon Washington. Skynet is reinstated, and later the US declares a new war in the middle east. The Skynet stock rallies.

• jerlam

  today at 8:38 PM

  This movie is back in theaters for a limited time, for its 35th anniversary!

  Assuming that your movie theaters haven't all closed already.

• orochimaaru

  today at 8:19 PM

  About time. We are a couple of decades late to the apocalypse.

• testplzignore

  today at 4:35 PM

  Interesting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.

• t1234s

  today at 7:36 PM

  This is how AI will solve the paperclip problem.

• bloqs

  today at 6:45 PM

  I read this in Linda Hamiltons voice

• justsomehnguy

  today at 4:30 PM

  I find it quite sombre to see this comment from a peson with that handle.

• SaltyBackendGuy

  today at 3:54 PM

  Ha - this was the first thing that came to mind. I read this in Arnold's voice.

  • ben7799

    today at 4:16 PM

    I didn't read it in Arnold's voice till I saw your comment, so thank you.

• throw310822

  today at 4:07 PM

  No worries, these will all be controlled by AIs sitting in orbiting data centers part of the Starlink constellation.

  And in any case, no one is building humanoid robots.

  • lelandfe

    today at 7:01 PM

    https://xtech.army.mil/competition/xtechhumanoid/

    > The U.S. Army is seeking innovative humanoid technology solutions from eligible small and large businesses across the globe to advance toward fielded militarized humanoid capabilities through the xTechHumanoid competition

  • konart

    today at 8:00 PM

    See Robot Fighting Tournament

  • jagged-chisel

    today at 6:40 PM

    > no one is building humanoid robots.

    https://www.agilityrobotics.com/

    • bigfishrunning

      today at 8:01 PM

      And Boston Dynamics. And Tesla. And Honda.

      Lots of people are building humanoid robots.

• alpn

  today at 4:33 PM

  ref: https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I?t=29

• aeve890

  today at 8:05 PM

  >Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate

  Just geometric? Pfff lame. You don't go ASI with that attitude.

> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation.

How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.

• nradov

  today at 6:43 PM

  These are going to be experienced test pilots who are pretty good at actively managing autopilots and other automated systems. Plus they'll be backed up by telemetry to ground controllers. But ultimately the military is willing to accept some losses in order to advance key R&D programs.

• Ccecil

  today at 8:07 PM

  Once the AI realizes it can do a maneuver the aircraft can survive but the "bossy meatbag" in the cockpit cannot...

• pudgywalsh

  today at 7:54 PM

  This stuff actually gets tested, it's not your typical web framework junk.

  • anthk

    today at 8:29 PM

    So did Boeing airtoys, and NASA stuff lend to 3rd parties with no concept of a metric system.

    I trust machinery designed from Forth and Lisp hackers with TONS of background on CS science and hardware (and math, up to the point on being THE people creating most "new" technology and old ones such as the Floating Point IEEE standard).

  • hansmayer

    today at 7:56 PM

    [dead]

So, it's a drone with uncessercary baggage such life support and a pilot that can't stand the Gs well.

For some reason I am reminded of Dark Star :-)

• alephnerd

  today at 8:18 PM

  Pretty much, but it's building on top of the previous QF program [0][1] where the USAF would retrofit retired jets like the F-4 and older F-16s as drones for target training. They used to be remotely controlled but the VENOM platform is testing complete autonomy.

  [0] - https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...

  [1] - https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first...

The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".

In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.

Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.

• ACCount37

  today at 8:19 PM

  Unless those very F-16s shred their way through the AA weapons first, that is. Or follow up once the stealthier, more survivable platforms pave the way.

  Iran had a solid AA system - and the level of impunity with which US operated with over Iran should give every country that wants to rely on its AA a pause. US SEAD/DEAD capabilities are fucking scary.

  Of all the things that went wrong with Iran: USAF's capability to get in, punch through AA and rain fires from the sky sure wasn't one.

• chasd00

  today at 7:04 PM

  > In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.

  The scope of the first Iraq war was to force them out of Kuwait. That is very different then the invasion of 2003. If you just think about it this should be obvious.

• bobthebob

  today at 7:42 PM

  Oh what a great CIA campaign that would be to give the impression that U.S. military isn’t up to par - to motivate and trick our enemies into making stupid moves while we keep our true cards hidden.

  Such a crazy thought.

  • a34729t

    today at 8:09 PM

    You say that, but that's literally a Russian conspiracy theory with Ukraine: The US baited Russia into thinking the US was weak because of Afghanistan, and then Russia got all ballsy and walked into Ukraine and it was a trap.

  • mohamedkoubaa

    today at 8:02 PM

    Decades of utter incompetence somehow ended yesterday?

• Jtsummers

  today at 7:01 PM

  > In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.

  The objectives for the two wars were incredibly different, making this an apples to oranges comparison. In the first war, the objective was to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (achieved) and then to contain the Iraqi military within Iraq (achieved). In the second war, the objectives were much broader and much harder to achieve. They achieved some objectives (toppling the existing government, defeating the existing military), and then utterly failed in nation building and got into a protracted conflict with state and non-state sponsored military groups.

  • bluGill

    today at 8:35 PM

    I wouldn't call nation building a failure. It made significant progress.

• psunavy03

  today at 8:19 PM

  Because the most powerful military in the world can only do so much when ordered to execute a crap strategy by civilian leadership. Desert Storm worked because it followed the Powell Doctrine and was bounded to ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi Freedom muddled through incoherently because the Bush and Obama administrations didn't want to understand the actual problem set they were faced with, but ultimately ended up with a reasonably stable country after way too much effort and time. Iran is what happens when you have an administration who thinks you can win a war by "just bombing things," which is ironically the stereotype most of the internet has about any kind of military action.

• alephnerd

  today at 7:39 PM

  > The article smells of AI psychosis...

  China has been doing something similar since 2020 [0] and something we've experimented [1] on for decades [2][3].

  They have traditionally been used as target aircraft for training, but a subset are now being used as testbeds for networked ops.

  [0] - https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/10/20/c...

  [1] - https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first...

  [2] - https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...

  [3] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QF-4E_GulfofMexico_1...

• jimbob45

  today at 7:40 PM

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...

  Bush Sr knew to keep the foreign-compromised media out of the war and so accomplished the objectives of the war swiftly. Bush Jr had to deal with the media second guessing everything.

• FrustratedMonky

  today at 4:09 PM

  Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.

  • justsomehnguy

    today at 4:32 PM

    > Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots.

    In a dogfight?

    • whartung

      today at 4:41 PM

      As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.

      I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.

      • psunavy03

        today at 8:22 PM

        The simulator is not the aircraft.

        • FrustratedMonky

          today at 8:30 PM

          Simulator tech has come a long way. I wouldn't say a simulator invalidates the result.

      • bloqs

        today at 6:46 PM

        They did a small set of tests with one Pilot IIRC?

        • stackskipton

          today at 6:54 PM

          I think they did it in simulation with several.

          In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.

    • rolph

      today at 7:17 PM

      human pilots have physiological constraints that AI doesnt.

      onboard computers are not immune to G's but have a substantially higher threshold until physical mechanisms fail due to strain.

    • IshKebab

      today at 7:21 PM

      Is that hard to believe? It's got to be one of the easiest situations for AI to win in. You probably don't even need any fancy modern AI; I would have thought MPC would do most of the job.

    • bwv848

      today at 7:11 PM

      [dead]

• tokai

  today at 4:29 PM

  What are you talking about, Iraq fell in a month not years.

  • codeddesign

    today at 4:40 PM

    Did it? You mean operational govt fell. The country was fought over for 10 yrs, which the U.S. then backed out.

    Israel got a regime change while U.S. tax payers received the bill.

    In the end, it’s still a country.

    • tokai

      today at 5:42 PM

      I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.

• bwv848

  today at 7:02 PM

  [dead]

The field demo I want to see, Human in the loop to failure switch over: Simulated failure of some form, where (for safety reasons) crew triggers ejection. This defaults the system to autonomous mode and the plane performs a safe landing.

• ARandomerDude

  today at 8:28 PM

  Auto GCAS (Ground Collision Avoidance System) exists (pre-AI), although it is nowhere near as sophisticated as what you described. Similar type of idea though.

  If the pilot passes out during high-g maneuvers, the aircraft will pull up and bring the wings level until the pilot regains consciousness.

  https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/autogcas.html

Tangent: is AI a bearable arm?

• jvanderbot

  today at 7:45 PM

  Don't tread on ... my gpu

Sounds like a very expensive drone

• icegreentea2

  today at 4:11 PM

  Yes-ish.

  There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...

  VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.

  VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.

  The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".

  The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".

• Eridrus

  today at 4:06 PM

  I'm sure there will be a next generation of jet drones that are cheaper, but the autonomy kit here is probably still cheaper than new jet drones.

  I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.

  • impulser_

    today at 4:10 PM

    They are already building them.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_FQ-42_Dark_Mer...

• cucumber3732842

  today at 3:47 PM

  More like it'll fly itself while the pilot engages in other tasks.

  Every pound of weapons officer/navigator is a pound you can't put on target all else being equal.

  • wartywhoa23

    today at 4:17 PM

    "I apologize, that was indeed a wedding party, not a terrorist camp I wrongly assumed. You are totally right, wasting those 3 Hydras was unacceptable. On a brighter side, we've got 39 more to go!

    Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"

  • jackb4040

    today at 4:07 PM

    * You're absolutely right. My altitude is dropping precipitously. Let me check my elevator position to see if that's causing the problem.

    * Bash Check elevator position

    * Thought for 8s

  • ErroneousBosh

    today at 3:51 PM

    So like some sort of automatic pilot then?

    • cucumber3732842

      today at 4:06 PM

      Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)

      I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.

      • rogerrogerr

        today at 8:19 PM

        > Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)

        What does this mean? I’m a pilot and none of it is making any sense.

  • throw310822

    today at 4:11 PM

    Does the presence of humans on board limit the maneuverability of these aircraft in any way? E.g. in terms of acceleration?

    • rvba

      today at 4:26 PM

      Yes. Humans can survive 9g for only a few seconds, while a drone could do much sharper manouvers

      • StableAlkyne

        today at 4:41 PM

        While they can, drones are still limited by physics.

        Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.

        It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.

        Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.

      • ChrisMarshallNY

        today at 4:32 PM

        But they also have their limits.

        Bolts and trusses (and solder joints) have tensile strength limits, but it can be higher than what humans can take.

• RIMR

  today at 3:47 PM

  Drones have human operators. This is a murderbot.

  • zajio1am

    today at 3:54 PM

    There are already semi-autonomous drones in Ukraine.

  • gjskngnf

    today at 4:08 PM

    It’s a drone. That can kill people.

Human control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated.

Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.

• nalthis

  today at 8:26 PM

  The way I see it, this is the JDAM of drones. Will it perform better than purpose built aircraft? No. But the USAF has a few hundred old F-16s entering retirement that would be mothballed otherwise, and strapping some cheap sensors to them is a fast way to play around with the idea while they wait for Lockheed and Anduril to finish the good stuff.

• jandrewrogers

  today at 5:03 PM

  The US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets.

  Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.

  The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.

  • anonymousiam

    today at 6:03 PM

    The F16 was the first fully fly-by-wire fighter jet. It's an ideal platform for AI experiments. Having AI "wing men" can be a great tactical advantage, and they're expendable.

• IshKebab

  today at 7:24 PM

  > when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.

  Yeah this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44

  The "see also" section lists several competitors.

  I guess if you already have a load of F-16s it might make sense, but I think that's a stretch.

I thought Captain America personally stopped this initiative

  A computer can never be held accountable

  Therefore a computer must make all unpopular management decisions

• wartywhoa23

  today at 4:24 PM

  This whole AI hype is such a convenient cover for the decisions of the 0.001%

  • reactordev

    today at 4:28 PM

    It really is. It's the perfect excuse to do what they please.

• LeifCarrotson

  today at 4:12 PM

  That's not precisely how I remember that quote... But it's on the Internet, so my memory must be faulty.

• today at 6:21 PM

• jauntywundrkind

  today at 4:53 PM

  With apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point.

  Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083

Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have.

It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies * AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help * AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America * AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget

Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.

• krunck

  today at 8:34 PM

  > Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned?

  Only when they look out their window and feel immediately threatened by what they see. Humans are shortsighted as fuck.

• jandrewrogers

  today at 5:08 PM

  Dogfights aren't really a thing for a modern military. What the AI enables is much higher endurance than is feasible with a human in the loop. They planes can stay flying as long as they can be refueled, which is also going AI.

• IsTom

  today at 5:01 PM

  Are dogfights still relevant? Isn't it mostly shooting missiles outside of visual range these days?

  • bluGill

    today at 8:39 PM

    Dog fights are relevant for training. Also useful for slow drone work. However fighter on fighter is where missles are used

  • red-iron-pine

    today at 7:50 PM

    yeah well beyond the line of sight

    you're either stealth, or you're a target.

    they're shooting 6+ R-37s a day in Ukraine, for example

• ryandrake

  today at 7:18 PM

  > Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned?

  Is someone, somewhere using the wrong bathroom? Or is the wrong colored person crossing an invisible line in the desert? Those seem to be the only issues that reliably get the (American) public to the polls.

• impulser_

  today at 4:47 PM

  These systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them.

  "This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."

  The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.

  "Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."

  Which are these:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-unmanned_teaming

  And everyone is developing these.

• orbital-decay

  today at 7:01 PM

  >Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies

  Except this never happened, it's a piece of marketing. It never "went rogue" but followed an intentional prompt (exploit-related benchmark), with hardly surprising results as the capabilities of this model were well known.

  >AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America

  An entirely different kind of AI, not huge generalist models. Neural networks are being experimented with in sensors and control systems since the 80s and are widely used in everything since AlexNet, not sure what's new here, especially "this month" new.

  • anirudhc2005

    today at 7:17 PM

    [dead]

• philipwhiuk

  today at 4:53 PM

  > I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time,

  Unfortunately you're wrong. It's not soon. It's 6 years ago.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight

based, finally we get to Macross Plus

• Mobius01

  today at 7:25 PM

  One Sharon Apple concert before the end!

Finally. I hope they do a10!

The drones of Ace Combat 7 are coming closer to reality

• red-iron-pine

  today at 7:51 PM

  does this mean we'll have preachy anti-war lectures while fighting them, too?

  • bigfishrunning

    today at 8:12 PM

    We can only hope -- bring back M*A*S*H!

This is a huge waste of resources. F-16s were designed for humans. You can get MUCH better results designing the airframe around the lack of one.

• philipwhiuk

  today at 4:53 PM

  It's a step on from the F-16 flight simulator AI competition in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight

• adrian_b

  today at 6:45 PM

  As another poster already said, building new F-16s would be a waste of resources, but using the old existing F-16s by automating them is likely to be a better use of the existing resources, instead of scraping them. This also allows to gain experience that might be useful for designing the future unmanned airframes.

I'm waiting for a ship called Nomad to go rogue.

Hey look, the lawn darts are now AI-controlled.

What a waste of resources.

[dead]

[dead]

Not a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.

Autonomous driving is still nowhere near 100%, so why suddenly jump to fighter jets? Is this more of Hegseth's foolhardy bluster and injected testosterone? The tech isn't ready. They should start with golf-karts, not fighter planes.

-----------

Edit: Okay gang. If aircraft are easier to fly than cars are to drive, where are all your pilot licenses? If you've faced rush hour traffic, flying a military jet should be a breeze! Please, go volunteer your neighbourhoods to be the first for AI jets to be tested over. We can put a mock enemy target in an empty lot and watch them pick it off, first try, with zero collateral damage. Easy peasy!

• syrrim

  today at 7:43 PM

  Fighter jets don't need 100%. In a war, we accept a much higher rate of casualties than we do in day to day driving. I would also imagine that while planes are harder for a person to pilot, they are easier for a computer. Most of what makes them hard is mechanical, not dealing with unexpected situations.

• serf

  today at 7:32 PM

  I reject the notion that planes are harder to automate.

• Lord-Jobo

  today at 7:31 PM

  There are many ways that flying is an easier solve than driving, believe it or not.

• ge96

  today at 7:31 PM

  Planes might be easier, large empty space in the sky