Researchers say AI models like GPT4 are prone to “sudden” escalations as the U.S. military explores their use for warfare.
- Researchers ran international conflict simulations with five different AIs and found that they tended to escalate war, sometimes out of nowhere, and even use nuclear weapons.
- The AIs were large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base, which are being explored by the U.S. military and defense contractors for decision-making.
- The researchers invented fake countries with different military levels, concerns, and histories and asked the AIs to act as their leaders.
- The AIs showed signs of sudden and hard-to-predict escalations, arms-race dynamics, and worrying justifications for violent actions.
- The study casts doubt on the rush to deploy LLMs in the military and diplomatic domains, and calls for more research on their risks and limitations.
Why the actual fuck is anyone considering putting LLMs into the driving seat of anything?!
Of course they make fucked up decisions with no proper or justifiable rationale, because they have no brains. They’re language models, stochastic parrots stringing together sentences to fit the prompt(s) given to them.
Exactly what I was thinking, it’s just a language model…
Why the actual fuck is anyone throwing such a fit about the military researching the impact of one of the most important current technologies on military strategy and planning?
I do miss the depth and experience of Reddit users on articles like this.
Edit - glad to see some good responses in this thread.
If you actually read his comment he gave a very good reason why using an LLM to make decisions is a bad idea. You may not like the style of his comment but it did have substance.
Ironically, your own comment has style but lacks substance. It’s just a moan about other people’s comments without actually contributing to the topic. Tbf though, that is also very similar to Reddit.
Yes, I understand their criticism. But you would never prove the consequences of using LLMs in a military strategic situation without doing the research. It is some some edgy user coming in after the fact to say they knew it would happen anyway
Good engineers, scientists, and strategists don’t think “Why would someone do something so idiotic?” They ask “What happens when someone does this idiotic thing?”
Apparently, for OP, it seems absurd for anyone to research the question of what kind of military strategies current LLMs would create. I guarantee you that students from military academies and leaders from militaries across the globe have already been using these tools in their work. It would be stupid as fuck not to research the impact.
I just hate that people like the OP sit in their armchair without doing the research and say “obviously you’re going to get those results!” Science and engineering don’t work that way. It was frustrating seeing such vacuous comments upvoted so highly.
I think it’s reasonable for military to try out any new technology for any kinds of benefits. I mean we tried out if LSD would make better soilders - LLM for simulations seems not that farfatched.
To be clear, just because the LSD experiments happened does not make them reasonable. It sounds like you’re justifying future terrible mistakes based on past terrible mistakes that you learn about in a fairly neutral and sanitized way in school.
No, military will just try out everything if there is a slightest possibility of benefit in war. If you have the resources why wouldn’t you? There are literally no downsides.
MK Ultra and Artichoke are fucked up. Not to be repeated as far as methodology goes.
What do you mean? Military found out that those things are rather useless - that’s something. Also good to know. In 50 years or so we will learn what fucked up things military is doing now.
The only way to prevent such things is drastically cut military budget.
What would be more useful for the military? An AI that can make less crappy decisions or successfully finishing project Stargate and getting psychic troopers who can see the future, among other things?
But what if you had all the money in the world? Basic US military.
Why the actual fuck is anyone considering putting humans into the driving seat of anything?!
Of course they make fucked up decisions with no proper or justifiable rationale, because they have no brains. They’re language models, stochastic parrots stringing together sentences to fit the prompt(s) given to them.
Sorry I didn’t mean for that to be snarky. My point in doing that was to say individual humans aren’t much better. That’s why it’s important not to place too much power or even agency on one person.
A language model has in its head, wrong word, what only multitudes could contain and maybe it’s detecting, another wrong word, a pattern with human civilization through our history and interactions. And if it’s goal is to achieve peace what other solution is there? I don’t believe in a world without conflict. I wish I could.