mathinpens

er actually there are a lot of laws regarding the transfer of technology from the united states to foreign entities [which I do not know if there are statues that are implicated in the google matter but considering the willful blindness of several tech companies in the past it would not particularly surprise me]. but moreover-this is basically congress writing a letter-they are free to write whatever letters they want to regardless of whether or not laws have been broken]. part of creating new laws is initiating inquiries into things... considering the sorry state of forced technology transfer in joint chinese-foreign ventures I think some congressional scrutiny is long long overdue.

er saying lawmakers shouldn't interfere in corporate matters is like saying lawmakers shouldn't interfere in laws

Very possible. I sorta think this might just be part of being a phd student in computer science.

reading books is one of the essential pleasures in life also so it is always good advice

This all great advice :) I also find taking long walks with zero technology and just thinking about things

-makes me feel much better -relaxed -helps recovers the joy of thinking deeply

I don't think I'm depressed- but I feel like my highs are very high and my lows are very low

Thanks for the advice

Thanks for posting this - I've been very anxious today about some stuff I havent implemented and this is making me feel better

people have died and will continue to die because of excessive emissions and this program of evasion conducted by audi and volvo was willful and malicious.

you do realize the ohio replacement class is literally in development right now.

The ICBMs probably don't even work (no public evidence they do), they're in well known static silos, and have just a few minutes of "use or lose" time.

They fire off a few randomly selected minuteman IIIs every so often and the footage is typically public. maybe not perfect evidence but it is some evidence.

did you actually read or watch the whole testimony (of either testimony) or you basing this on ~5 minutes of youtube click bait footage of older senators being confused...

I watched the entire zuckerberg united states senate testimony and I found much of the questioning incisive and valuable

I really enjoyed reading this essay-thank you for writing it.

signal UX is great!

more like superfusing, missile defense systems, superior early warning radar...

handful = 14 boats on deterrence patrols. there are literally 1000 warheads on active american boomers with superfusing.....

If literally one submarine survives this amazing russian counterstrike by taking out every single other ohio class at once that still leaves a counterforce of at most 12*24 = 288 warheads. that is 144 to burn russian cities and 144 to burn chinese cities. to me that seems like a credible strike.

and this is still assuming literally NO land based or air deliverable weapons are left. ... considering the spotty accuracy of russian missiles (seriously go look up their CEP ratios - do you even know what CEP stands for? ) I find that scenario very unlikely.

China is widely believed to have only 270 warheads...

https://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-u...

you are misinformed.

the only jargon in this is API?

writing this was a mistake. this is clearly a deceptive pr spin fluff that is entirely non-responsive to the specific concerns raised in the new york times article.

lol. obviously if I am on the receiving end I want bad targeting!

meh we already are kinda in that world. as for skynet...throws hands in the air

Well currently the unmanned drones do not automatically kill anything. Each drone has `pilot' who runs that drone and I believe only that drone. that pilot is in arizona somewhere instead of in the plane.

look I am pretty critical of american foreign policy and our current state of imperial dominance but I mean...calling it blind terrorism misses a huge amount of nuance.

most drone strikes are very targeted in that they try to kill specific groups of people in very specific locations. However, in a counter insurgency war, from 20,000 feet + the fog of war it is quite easy to drone a wedding for instance.

I agree it's inevitable that someone ill intentioned use ML + drone to create deadly weapons, I don't understand why USA is doing it, nor what are they trying to accomplish like that.

Do you really not understand it? People in government think this technology will have substantial military benefits and they don't see any compelling reason not to develop the technology.

Drone strick is already a main argument in terrorist propaganda, I don't see how increasing the number of attacks and decreasing human intervention is going to help that.

I don't really know if more autonomous weapons will result in more air strikes/drone strikes or less. I doubt it would have any huge effect on the number.

Moreover I don't really see increasing automation will have much bearing on propaganda. I think people in the middle east don't like drones because their family, friends, and neighbors are killed. The degree of automation in the kill chain is probably the last thing they are thinking about as they grieve.

The weapon gives pilots the ability to destroy moving targets on the battlefield. Its seeker detects, classifies, tracks and destroys targets, even in adverse weather conditions from standoff ranges. "We call SDB II a game changer because the weapon doesn't just hit GPS coordinates; it finds and engages targets," said Mike Jarrett, Raytheon Air Warfare Systems vice president. "SDB II can eliminate a wider range of targets with fewer aircraft, reducing the pilot's time in harm's way."

I think it is pretty hard to parse just how autonomous these are.

'https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/developmental-testi...

edit: muahaha I found a good reference

Once launched, the SDB-II relies on a sophisticated package of internal computing and algorithms that are designed to get the most out of its tri-mode sensors, and make the process of launch and targeting as simple and flexible as possible for the pilot. The GPS/INS system or datalink messages guide the bomb toward the target during the initial search phase, while the tri-mode seeker gathers initial data. A revisit phase combines information from all of its sensor modes to classify targets. That’s especially useful because the SDB-II can be told to prioritize certain types of targets, for example by distinguishing between tracked and wheeled vehicles, or by giving laser “painted” targets priority.

so some amount of classification/targeting. again I am unclear if the bomb can re-prioritize targets without confirmation from the pilot but it seems like technically very possible.

https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/raytheon-wins-usas-gbu-...

I am sorta mixed on this. Is it better to be killed by a person or a computer? does it make a difference? what if the computer system kills less `innocent' people than a dumb human? I don't think it is that black and white.

It is very troubling though.

I am actually not sure. before posting this comment I spent like 20 minutes reading the defense literature/media to get a more precise understanding of the technical details. The commentary is pretty vague but I think the difference between HARM/Anti-Ship is you fire-and-forget but before you fire, the missile does have a TARGET that the missile then is tracked onto while in this case you release the bomb to a general area and then it either identifies a target and locks on or it destroys itself in the air. I think that is somewhat different from previous smart weapons.

warning: this could be apocryphal since I can't find the documentation that made this distinction explicit but i remember reading about this a few weeks ago.

That sounds like a bundle of fun. I bet you really enjoyed undergrad!

I think it'd be very fun to work for the state department or at a think tank as a subject matter expert-say in internal Brazilian politics or something wonky. A lot of fun government jobs. Some of those probably require a doctoral degree. Alternatively I agree a bachelors is a good foundation for a law degree.

Or I think one could work for a place like Stratfor or the other private intelligence/business intelligence firms that are less well known.

I also think it'd be a darn hoot to be a working historian (maybe in academia maybe not) of the kind who writes history books. Really just being a historian in general though.

I am having a hard time thinking of things that would provide a labor pool large enough to have a reasonable chance of making a career of.

Everything I mentioned was a very high variance choice no doubt. Of course you are correct. It is probably not a good choice for the vast masses of people. I would not make a choice like this unless I was at a high brow college.

welp: I am stem person though but I sometimes wistfully ponder a different path.

edit: of course history seems to prepare one well for politics

my only comment is that the opportunity to stop weaponized AI is long long long gone. the barriers to entry for modern machine learning methods are just so low and the military benefits are there. Near peer states are going to do this and we frankly cannot stop them. the train has left the station...

sidenote: my impression is the next block of the small diameter bomb has a semi-autonomous feature where it can glide over a target area without a pre-sighted target-use some computer vision-recognize a tank- adjust its trajectory to hit the tank. all without a man-in-the-loop. pretty nifty.

edit: also these jobs are literally hiring right now. you can polish up your cv and send it to a DOD lab and in a few months you will be using deep learning to kill. SICK!

I think it is remarkably superficial to call these degrees useless. Yes- initiating a career with them is more non-trivial than a stem degree but if you look ahead and make a concrete plan you can do great things with a History degree (especially if you go to a highly regarded school).

lol

I'm willing to say that outright. In my experience as a very aquatic person ie water polo/swimming/surfing most civilians have nooooo clue how to swim. They know how to not immediately drown... But that's about it. Your typical surfer is also a good swimmer and comfortable in the water. So the people who can actually swim are 1. Competitive swimmers 2. Surfers

My adult swimming standards are going to be 1. Can you swim 1 mile open water 2. Do you know what to do in a rip tide

yes but we assign a huge normative value to this arrangement. I think that idea is more modern.

imo you should definitely do linear algebra before learning RL or stats. it will make everything else much easier.