“The problem with war, Cukor told me, had always been the humans. ‘They’re materially corrupt, inefficient, and they get tired.’ And when they die it affects the campaign… He believed humans could do better with the help of machines, and that AI could pierce the Fog of War.” (p. 4)
“Nearly forty million people died in the First World War. An estimated eighty-five million people died in the Second World War. A Third World World War remained unthinkable.” (p. 351)
Watching what’s happening in the Ukraine War and the Iran War, it’s clear warfare will be fought by missiles and drones guided by Artificial Intelligence. Katrina Manson’s Project Maven tells how Colonel Drew Cukor first got the Defense Department involved in Artificial Intelligence a decade ago. Now, all the Big AI Players like Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir, and Amazon are supplying the Defense Department new technology to fight wars.
Katrina Manson not only presents the growth of the relationship between AI and the military, she issues warnings about weapon systems that are autominous and can act without human oversight. Very dangerous! What do you think about Artificial Intelligence? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A Note on Sources — vii
Prologue — 1
Introduction — 3
- Old Wars — 13
- Tilting at Windmills — 22
- We Do What We Want — 29
- They Call It Algorithmic Warfare — 43
- The First Mavenites — 55
- Relaxed About Fury — 65
- The Colonel and the Math Whiz — 76
- Somalia — 86
- Moral Outrage — 100
- The Algorithms Have No Clue — 119
- Harbinger of Doom — 134
- Arms Race — 145
- Daddy Karp — 155
- Palantir, Palantir, Palantir — 169
- Palantir Splits the Team — 184
- A Striking Operation — 194
- Data Hell — 204
- We’ll Find It and We’ll Strike It — 223
- Nobody Knows Targeting Better Than Trey — 238
- Kill Chain — 246
- Ukraine Fights Back — 261
- Tens of Thousands of Targets — 275
- We’ve Drunk the Kool-Aid — 287
- Machines Shouldn’t Kill People — 309
- Trump’s Robots — 319
- The Winchester House — 335
Epilogue — 351
Acknowledgments — 355
Notes — 357
Index –– 398
I know I’ve shared this story before, but to me it’s a perfect metaphor for AI: when my brother and I were kids, we got some packages of modeling clay (in England, this was referred to as plasticine) in a wide variety of colors. I suggested to my brother that we could make more things if we blended all the plasticine together, and so we did. Yes, this resulted in a lot of plasticine to play with, but fairly soon it morphed into a ball of grayish-brown, all the colors gone (in those pre-Play Doh days, colors did not stay separated). When we finished playing, my brother asked for all his colors back, and I had to tell him they were gone, now forever part of this big ball of grayish stuff. That to me is AI: it takes all the color and vibrancy of human thought, endeavor, and creative expression and turns it into a amorous gray-brown blob from which one can never extricate the original individual colors.
TL; DR: AI chokes the color and creativity out of life…which means it will continue to be used and abused by the evil and unimaginative amongst us.
Deb, that’s a great cautionary story! As I told my students when they would ask my opinion of AI: “Have you seen THE TERMINATOR?”
BRILLIANT!
Jackie
Jackie, I think Deb is brilliant, too!
Last week I found myself in a heated argument with a medical billing department AI monster until I realized what the hell I doing. My basic desire at the time (as well as now) was to smack the dumb AI on its nonexistent head with a large stick. AI may have many important uses but if it is not programmed to help you, it damned well won’t.
Jerry, most AIs are programmed to make money. And, just maybe Take Over the World…
(*fingers in ears*)
Lalalalala
Not going to listen. I’m with Bill Crider on this: we’re doomed, doomed.
Jeff, without any “guard rails” Artificial Intelligence could doom us…
Every time I ask to talk to a human it takes a lot of effort and sometimes isn’t available. When I do get a human I always let them know what a relief it was and the amount of time wasted with AI. They always say they hear it constantly