5 ms·

I agree with other commenters that the claims made in the report are strange. > We used to rely on our traditional methods. We sent 200 fighters because we had

I agree with other commenters that the claims made in the report are strange. > We used to rely on our traditional methods. We sent 200 fighters because we had a lot of strength, but then 60 got killed. With the help of AI, we learned that it sometimes makes sense to only send 20. We learned more about well-coordinated attacks and deployment of smaller units. The other quotes and use cases could make sense in terms of using AI jailbreaks to find information more easily, but this one is absolutely ridiculous. Did the clueless researcher just get trolled?

andy99 2mo ago
Or the researcher read what they wanted to into it. It would be interesting to ask them what they did before to learn things, how much they read, etc. If they were illiterate and uneducated, and got voice AI telling them stuff that would be common sense for anyone with a high school education, I can see how it might make them more effective at whatever they do. But I wouldn’t really blame AI in the way that’s implied.
- quantumleaper 2mo ago
  Human brains were shaped over thousands of years of adaptation for warfare. Just look at how creative and advanced the tactics of other guerrilla forces (like the Taliban and Viet Cong) got, despite their very limited resources. None of that needs a high school education.
  - xp84 2mo ago
    It's not about education itself necessarily, but I'd bet any amount of money that most terrorists' IQ is below the overall human average. The average terrorist is not that innovative or creative so the most mundane GPT "insight" will likely be a smarter course of action than whatever their first idea would have been.
    - el_memorioso 2mo ago
      Do you have some evidence to suggest mundane GPT insights would not be smarter than the average human's idea? There's a reason so many are completely abdicating any responsibility to think to an LLM, and I'd bet any amount of money it's not because they think the LLM is dumber than them.
    - yorwba 2mo ago
      If anything, the average terrorist is probably smarter than the average member of their surrounding societies, since you need a minimum amount of education to understand the ideology motivating the terrorism. Don't forget that Taliban literally means "students." The number of times someone tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan suggests that it's not an easy feat that any fool could have done, but the Taliban managed to do it twice. Fighting a much more numerous enemy may seem stupid, but if you really believe your ideology, any odds of success are better than none. Think open-source developers competing with commercial offerings maintained by huge teams. Terrorists building IEDs when their enemy has a full military-industrial complex are much the same. They just really believe their ideology. On this, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-nine-lives https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-nine-lives is a good read.
      - xp84 2mo ago
        > Fighting a much more numerous enemy may seem stupid, but if you really believe your ideology, any odds of success are better than none. Embracing and believing this destructive ideology itself in the first place, when you could devote your life to so many better[1] things, is the sign of stupidity I mean. Believing that God wants you to murder other people (heck, even babies) over things such as who's worshiping Him correctly... stupid. 1. Better for... you name it: Your quality of life, welfare of other human beings, economically, spiritually, environmentally.
        yorwba 2mo ago
        Making a mistake, even a pretty fundamental mistake, doesn't necessarily mean somebody is stupid. If you need to get really deep into theology before you can even be in a position to make the mistake, it's a mistake only a smart and educated person can make. The list of famous mathematicians who tried to prove the existence of god includes Descartes, Newton, Leibniz and Gödel. A fool's errand, to be sure, but those were no stupid fools.
  - quietsegfault 2mo ago
    You don’t think that there were highly educated people in leadership roles in the Taliban or Viet Cong?
    - selimthegrim 2mo ago
      You might want to research the origins of the Taliban a little more.
      - quietsegfault 2mo ago
        [flagged]
AnimalMuppet 2mo ago
You send 200 fighters and 60 get killed. In the same situation, if you send 20, what do you expect would happen? (I mean, you won't lose 60...)
- quietsegfault 2mo ago
  Depends. If the 20 are more spread out and your enemy is using inaccurate weapons, then maybe more would survive.
- dylan604 2mo ago
  It's like the Bill Hicks bit about the number of losses in Desert Storm. Iraqi casualties: 20,000 - 50,000. US casualties: 147. "Does that mean if we sent 148 guys we still would have won?"
aprilthird2021 2mo ago
Why is it a strange claim? > We used to rely on our traditional methods. We sent 200 fighters because we had a lot of strength, but then 60 got killed. They used to try to overpower people. We have 600 and that guard post has 400. We should be able to win. That type of logic. > With the help of AI, we learned that it sometimes makes sense to only send 20. We learned more about well-coordinated attacks and deployment of smaller units Better coordinating the attacks let them use less people and lose less people while still achieving the objective. Also it's possible smaller troop movements are less easily noticeable. That's just one very reasonable interpretation. Am I missing something?
- chasd00 2mo ago
  > Better coordinating the attacks let them use less people and lose less people while still achieving the objective and that has to be in the first chapter of every first year battle strategy/tactic book on the planet. They would learn more tactics much faster by just playing bf6 as a team and going through the tutorials.
  - throw2ih020 2mo ago
    > and that has to be in the first chapter of every first year battle strategy/tactic book on the planet. You expected Boko Haram - a group whose name literally translates to "books are forbidden" - to read a book?
throw2ih020 2mo ago
This is a real thing, it's why units like Sturmtruppen or special forces units have been successful throughout history - a smaller, better trained and coordinated force is often better than a large, uncoordinated mob. _Especially_ if your force is made up of people willing to do suicide attacks. Or if you goal is not to take and hold territory, but to trade lives for terror and body count. A wave of 1000 soldiers won't break a trench line, but a squad of infiltrators can sneak in and make entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtroopers_(Imperial_Germany)#Development_of_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtroopers_(Imperial_German...
- throwaway27448 2mo ago
  This is why Russians now attack in teams of just two, down from dozens in 2022.
- dylan604 2mo ago
  I don't think that's the point of suspicion. Smaller vs larger group tactics have been available in pretty much any place you look. It's in movies. It's in games. It's in books. Like actual military strategy books studied by military students. This has been available for much longer than LLMs.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - throw2ih020 2mo ago
    Boko Haram wouldn't have read any of those books because they banned the reading of any book except the Koran.
    - dylan604 2mo ago
      So they are okay reading the non-Koran text from the bot?
      - throw2ih020 2mo ago
anigbrowl 2mo ago
Consider the possibility that you're the clueless one here. Pitched battles are generally horribly inefficient for insurgent forces; they're not used to fighting in formation or doing sophisticated combined-arms attacks, and if they just rush their target as a mob it's easy to shoot lots of them with a machine gun. A small force of 20 people is easier to train, coordinate, and deploy and can be much more effective once they learn hit and run and basic ambush tactics.

andy99 2mo ago

Or the researcher read what they wanted to into it. It would be interesting to ask them what they did before to learn things, how much they read, etc. If they were illiterate and uneducated, and got voice AI telling them stuff that would be common sense for anyone with a high school education, I can see how it might make them more effective at whatever they do. But I wouldn’t really blame AI in the way that’s implied.

quantumleaper 2mo ago
Human brains were shaped over thousands of years of adaptation for warfare. Just look at how creative and advanced the tactics of other guerrilla forces (like the Taliban and Viet Cong) got, despite their very limited resources. None of that needs a high school education.
- xp84 2mo ago
  It's not about education itself necessarily, but I'd bet any amount of money that most terrorists' IQ is below the overall human average. The average terrorist is not that innovative or creative so the most mundane GPT "insight" will likely be a smarter course of action than whatever their first idea would have been.
  - el_memorioso 2mo ago
    Do you have some evidence to suggest mundane GPT insights would not be smarter than the average human's idea? There's a reason so many are completely abdicating any responsibility to think to an LLM, and I'd bet any amount of money it's not because they think the LLM is dumber than them.
  - yorwba 2mo ago
    If anything, the average terrorist is probably smarter than the average member of their surrounding societies, since you need a minimum amount of education to understand the ideology motivating the terrorism. Don't forget that Taliban literally means "students." The number of times someone tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan suggests that it's not an easy feat that any fool could have done, but the Taliban managed to do it twice. Fighting a much more numerous enemy may seem stupid, but if you really believe your ideology, any odds of success are better than none. Think open-source developers competing with commercial offerings maintained by huge teams. Terrorists building IEDs when their enemy has a full military-industrial complex are much the same. They just really believe their ideology. On this, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-nine-lives https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-nine-lives is a good read.
    - xp84 2mo ago
      > Fighting a much more numerous enemy may seem stupid, but if you really believe your ideology, any odds of success are better than none. Embracing and believing this destructive ideology itself in the first place, when you could devote your life to so many better[1] things, is the sign of stupidity I mean. Believing that God wants you to murder other people (heck, even babies) over things such as who's worshiping Him correctly... stupid. 1. Better for... you name it: Your quality of life, welfare of other human beings, economically, spiritually, environmentally.
      - yorwba 2mo ago
        Making a mistake, even a pretty fundamental mistake, doesn't necessarily mean somebody is stupid. If you need to get really deep into theology before you can even be in a position to make the mistake, it's a mistake only a smart and educated person can make. The list of famous mathematicians who tried to prove the existence of god includes Descartes, Newton, Leibniz and Gödel. A fool's errand, to be sure, but those were no stupid fools.
- quietsegfault 2mo ago
  You don’t think that there were highly educated people in leadership roles in the Taliban or Viet Cong?
  - selimthegrim 2mo ago
    You might want to research the origins of the Taliban a little more.
    - quietsegfault 2mo ago
      [flagged]

AnimalMuppet 2mo ago

You send 200 fighters and 60 get killed. In the same situation, if you send 20, what do you expect would happen? (I mean, you won't lose 60...)

quietsegfault 2mo ago
Depends. If the 20 are more spread out and your enemy is using inaccurate weapons, then maybe more would survive.
dylan604 2mo ago
It's like the Bill Hicks bit about the number of losses in Desert Storm. Iraqi casualties: 20,000 - 50,000. US casualties: 147. "Does that mean if we sent 148 guys we still would have won?"

aprilthird2021 2mo ago

Why is it a strange claim? > We used to rely on our traditional methods. We sent 200 fighters because we had a lot of strength, but then 60 got killed. They used to try to overpower people. We have 600 and that guard post has 400. We should be able to win. That type of logic. > With the help of AI, we learned that it sometimes makes sense to only send 20. We learned more about well-coordinated attacks and deployment of smaller units Better coordinating the attacks let them use less people and lose less people while still achieving the objective. Also it's possible smaller troop movements are less easily noticeable. That's just one very reasonable interpretation. Am I missing something?

chasd00 2mo ago
> Better coordinating the attacks let them use less people and lose less people while still achieving the objective and that has to be in the first chapter of every first year battle strategy/tactic book on the planet. They would learn more tactics much faster by just playing bf6 as a team and going through the tutorials.
- throw2ih020 2mo ago
  > and that has to be in the first chapter of every first year battle strategy/tactic book on the planet. You expected Boko Haram - a group whose name literally translates to "books are forbidden" - to read a book?

throw2ih020 2mo ago

This is a real thing, it's why units like Sturmtruppen or special forces units have been successful throughout history - a smaller, better trained and coordinated force is often better than a large, uncoordinated mob. _Especially_ if your force is made up of people willing to do suicide attacks. Or if you goal is not to take and hold territory, but to trade lives for terror and body count. A wave of 1000 soldiers won't break a trench line, but a squad of infiltrators can sneak in and make entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtroopers_(Imperial_Germany)#Development_of_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtroopers_(Imperial_German...

throwaway27448 2mo ago
This is why Russians now attack in teams of just two, down from dozens in 2022.
dylan604 2mo ago
I don't think that's the point of suspicion. Smaller vs larger group tactics have been available in pretty much any place you look. It's in movies. It's in games. It's in books. Like actual military strategy books studied by military students. This has been available for much longer than LLMs.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- throw2ih020 2mo ago
  Boko Haram wouldn't have read any of those books because they banned the reading of any book except the Koran.
  - dylan604 2mo ago
    So they are okay reading the non-Koran text from the bot?
    - throw2ih020 2mo ago

anigbrowl 2mo ago

Consider the possibility that you're the clueless one here. Pitched battles are generally horribly inefficient for insurgent forces; they're not used to fighting in formation or doing sophisticated combined-arms attacks, and if they just rush their target as a mob it's easy to shoot lots of them with a machine gun. A small force of 20 people is easier to train, coordinate, and deploy and can be much more effective once they learn hit and run and basic ambush tactics.