This is what happens when a normal person lucks/scams their way into billions: they think their random musings must be profound.
Like, how would such a war even work?? We have AI killbots shoot at eachother in no-mans-land, sure, but then what? The side with less killbots just gives up, like a fantasy novel monarch betting the realm on a trial by combat? Desperate people do desperate things, and those people having nuclear missles already scares me enough - I don't want to see them with self-replicating Von Nueman bomb drones or whatever other horrors the pentagon dreams up for us.
Yep. If we ever manage to remove the humans from the battlefield, the battlefield will simply move to where the humans are.
Anyway the point of war is to destroy the civilian infrastructure and the population that operates it, so they can't support an army. Which is kind of insanely circular because the army is there to defend the civilians and the infrastructure in the first place. War is just a mad thing and getting robots to do it will not make it any less mad, only more efficient at being mad.
This is true though. Modern warfare became much less deadly to civilians. Just compare Russia's total brutal destruction of Mariupol with their barbaric indiscriminating artillery barrages and Ukraine's almost bloodless liberation of Kherson, without a single artillery or air strike on the city itself — a very clear contrast between 20th and 21st century's warfare.
Wars will never go away, but by making them more precise and intelligent, we can make them not as horrible as they were in the past.
There's nothing about Russia's terror bombing that's related to not having advanced technology. Russia is using terror bombing because their strategic calculations have determined that weakening the Ukrainian nation would give them a strategic advantage - they've used advanced drones for this purpose as well as advanced missiles. If they had even more advanced systems, they would use them similarly.
Perhaps you could argue an advanced social system wouldn't target civilians but that's different issue (and still a hard one).
...by making them more precise and intelligent...
Precise technology is just as effective at precisely targeting civilians as it is at precisely soldiers and there hasn't been end to forces that view various civilians as the enemy.
And indeed, nations have very seldom targeted civilians because of the lack of precision - because civilians were standing next to soldiers or something similar. The human shield phenomena has happened but NAZIs targeted London for bombing because they wanted to break the British Nation. Etc.
We have to remember they bombed that theater in Mariupol (with a "precision" guided missile no less) not despite the fact that there were children and mothers inside -- but because of it.
I agree with your assessment as far as Ukraine is concerned.
However, I hope it's not a strawman to assume you're arguing that there is no progress in warfare in the sense of harm inflicted upon civilians. What would you prefer as a civilian: living in a country being conquered by Julius Caesar, Gengis Khan, occupied by Nazis in WWII or living in any of the countries occupied since WWII (including Ukraine)?
We even used to have a different word for it: "conquered". What was the lastest country in history, where this word would be appropriate?
However, I hope it's not a strawman to assume you're arguing that there is no progress in warfare in the sense of harm inflicted upon civilians.
My point is specifically that progress in the technologies of war don't by themselves promise that things will be less brutal. Quite possibly other things have produced progress. I make that clear in my parent post.
I would also note that technology produces unpredictable changes in the strategic situation and the actual result from a changed strategic is itself unpredictable even from the strategic situation. So where a technology change might take us is unpredictable and unpredictable-over-time. Notably, nuclear deterrence has so far worked well for keeping the world peaceful and is something of a factor for the relative pleasantness of the situation you cite. But if nuclear deterrence were to slip into nuclear war, the few survivors would probably think of this technology advance as the worst thing the world ever saw.
>What would you prefer as a civilian: living in a country being conquered by Julius Caesar, Gengis Khan, occupied by Nazis in WWII or living in any of the countries occupied since WWII (including Ukraine)?
East Timor, Tibet, Darfur, Iraq, Central African Republic, there's lots of post-WW II events that are easily as wretched for the victims.
I’ll preface this by saying that I have never known war in my lifetime and that I absolutely don’t condone it.
That said, isn’t the point of war also that it’s horrible and barbaric? If war isn’t that anymore, won’t it be much more frequent and casually started as a result?
Again, I’m absolutely not saying it’s a good thing that war maims and kills people, but I see these side effects as a deterrent. There is a component of terror to it and that’s what makes it even worse.
If it’s enlisted professional killing each other, or even robots destroying each other, it can go on for much longer. And how do you determine the “winner” in that case if you can keep feeding robots into the fight, it’s never ending I’d think.
> That said, isn’t the point of war also that it’s horrible and barbaric? If war isn’t that anymore, won’t it be much more frequent and casually started as a result?
Yes (usually), to the first question. The second begs the question though.
Wars are destructive and enormously expensive. Only a tiny fraction of human leaders wielding a disproportionate amount of power have the agency to start wars, and they do so in order to pursue specific (but varied) objectives. Since the cost is high, no one does this lightly (even the "crazy" ones, because they would already have lost power if they weren't smart and calculating).
AI may provide avenues to enhance the efficacy of wars. It may also provide avenues to enhance other strategies to achieve those objectives. In all cases, we can expect AI will be used to further the objectives of those humans with the power to direct its development and applications.
It is therefore ludicrous and self-interested speculation to claim that AI will reduce death rates. Andreessen signals this with the preface "I even think" so that he can make the claim without any later accountability. The reality is, future wartime death rates may or may not decrease, but even if they do, we likely won't even be able to credibly attribute the change to AI versus all other changes to the global geopolitical environment.
That said, isn’t the point of war also that it’s horrible and barbaric?
Of course - that's precisely the point. The idea that any technical innovation can make it less so (or make war less likely) runs counter to all historical observation.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I don't think the _point_ of war is to be barbaric - that's a by-product of forceful expansion of power. Regardless of how killing another human is done in the context of conflict, it will always be considered barbaric, but the _point_ of the conflict isn't be maximise barbarism.
I think (and know very little, so could be wrong), that the purpose of war is to expand influence. This can take the form of access to new resources (whether that be land, access, air space, whatever) or to form a buffer between one country and another. There's probably other reasons, simply like ego in some cases.
There are other ways to expand powerbases too - such as China's heavy financial and infrastructure investment in Africa and South Pacific nations, or attempting to undermine another country's social structures. These are longer and harder to implement, but yield better results with practically no blood shed.
> That said, isn’t the point of war also that it’s horrible and barbaric?
No. The conqueror never wants war — he prefers to get what he wants without any resistance. It's only the defender who has to wage war to defend itself from aggression.
I don't think that has much to do with AI. Russia is seeking to subjugate Ukraine and terrorize the population into surrendering, while Ukraine is attempting to protect the population.
If Russia had more military AI, they would use it to do more of the same thing they're doing with all of their current technologies.
But the same technology can also be used to make war, you know -- even more indiscriminate and deady. Or even where less so -- it can be used by the wrong side, even help them win in the end. While the companies that A16Z will inevitably invest in just keep raking in the profits, either way.
The “precision strikes” of the US weren’t very kind to Iraqi civilians either. War is horrible and it probably should never be viewed as anything else. Otherwise the temptations to start wars is too big for some political leaders.
Oh wait, here's another zinger: "I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically."