Judging from how the DoD currently buys software, lots of money will be spent, many headlines will be written, awards will be handed out, and zero software will make it on to user workstations. End users will continue to use Excel for everything.
jmsdnns 7 minutes ago [-]
Where did TCP/IP come from? It's on every computer.
tonyhart7 11 hours ago [-]
200 mil is chump change for them, if prototype turned to be good then good for them but if its not then they are not worry
FirmwareBurner 3 hours ago [-]
200 mil for a government contract is peanuts when you see how much taxpayer money governments loose via waste and corruption
raizer88 2 hours ago [-]
DOGE found basically nothing, and they worked with an axe trying to cut anything that come close to waste. So I am not sure where you see all this "waste and corruption".
acheong08 1 hours ago [-]
The goal of DOGE wasn't really to cut waste and corruption, just stuff they didn't like.
I'd argue that most of the military is waste and that America has no need to involve itself in wars. Something like Japan's SDF is sufficient and the extras could help with domestic infrastructure and public transport.
zimpenfish 2 hours ago [-]
> "waste and corruption"
Well, "waste" is often defined by conservatives as "anything spent on the poors and/or not given to the rich" - by that standard, yeah, there's a lot of "waste" in the US government.
transcriptase 1 hours ago [-]
What do you call it when the government pays for tens of thousands of annual licenses for software and only a few hundred are ever activated?
sorcerer-mar 1 minutes ago [-]
Oh oh I know this one!
A rounding error!
FirmwareBurner 2 hours ago [-]
Bad faith argument. Why are you moving the discussion to DOGE when that's not what I was talking about?
You know the word "governments" that I used, means a lot more than the current TRUMP administration, right? Broaden your mind and PoV.
And also, how can you say with a straight face there isn't ongoing and never has been waste and corruption in any government? Again, think for yourself, ignore $CURRENT_EVENTS.
Look at your nation's government contracts that funnel taxpayer money to private pockets, then look at the output. Has there been value delivered proportional to the money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then money was definitely wasted via incompetence, pocketed via corruption, or both.
This is so prevalent and is has become the norm everywhere for so long, that people are not even giving it a second thought anymore when it comes to government corruption, but somehow people want to be spoon-fed sources as if it's an unbelievable conspiracy theory.
sjsdaiuasgdia 1 hours ago [-]
> Has there been value delivered proportional to the money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then money was wasted via incompetence, pocketed via corruption, or both.
I'm going to unpack this a little. The second sentence does not actually follow from the question asked by the first sentence.
"Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved. I may consider an outcome to be of high value where you see the outcome as low value, and vice versa.
"Reasonable market rates" is a peculiar term to use when speaking about things government does. There are things we want as a society that would not be adequately replaced by market solutions. Roads, for example.
Your answer to your question contains a logic error due to the language choices of the question. You disagree with the value versus the cost spent. That does not mean there was corruption. It just means you disagree. Other people can hold the opinion that the value was worth the cost.
I am not claiming that there is 0 corruption or waste ever in government. I am saying that there has been an effort to create a perception that there is far more corruption and waste than actually exists. That in turn is being used as justification for taking a wide variety of actions that would be hard to sell otherwise.
FirmwareBurner 22 minutes ago [-]
>"Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved.
No it isn't. Most value CAN be objectively measured. I'll give you examples. US outspends all the other developed nations at healthcare, education, childcare and yet is behind them all in actual results with poor education, high infant motility and lower life expectancy. That's what waste and corruption does. Germany beats France at military spending and yet it's military is significantly less capable than France's. Waste and corruption.
If someone tells you the value of their work can't be objectively measured, it's because they're dodging accountability and they have their hand in your pocket and wish to keep it that way.
>There are things we want as a society that would not be adequately replaced by market solutions. Roads, for example.
Fine, let's go with roads. If the "market price" price for road construction is 6 million/KM, but your government signed a deal with a contractor for a basic road at 20+ million per KM without any objective justification of why the price hike, then the taxpayers are being taken for a ride, called waste and corruption.
And I'm not even saying anything out of the ordinary. Such grifts are the norm in plenty of countries.
sjsdaiuasgdia 16 minutes ago [-]
What would you say determines the market price of a kilometer of "basic road"?
nkrisc 1 hours ago [-]
Step up, throw down some numbers and sources.
FirmwareBurner 1 hours ago [-]
Let's do a thought exercise on your loaded question, considering government waste and corruption has been thoroughly covered by journalists since the invention of the free press and are a Google search away for you.
If I don't post sources, then you just accept government corruption doesn't exist, simply because nobody Googled for you?
If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept that stuff documented by the press it does exist?
Where, in good faith, were you hoping this conversation leads to when you were asking that?
It's not that there's any more fraud or waste in government than in private business, it's that it's less tolerated. I think the main reason for this misperception is that in the private sector, people pay a la carte for particular goods and services, while in the public sector, people pay for shared infrastructure even if they rarely use it themselves. So they are left with the feeling that they aren't getting their money's worth. But of course everyone benefits economically and socially from a stable and prosperous society, even if they can't put their finger on discrete services they use. The reality is that it simply costs a lot of money to maintain a large, modern society. Indeed, it actually costs more than we are paying here in the US, as evidenced by a growing debt that has been a bipartisan creation.
Believing in the mantra of waste, fraud and abuse is comforting, because it implies we could be getting all the same benefits for less money. But there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
nkrisc 14 minutes ago [-]
> If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept that stuff documented by the press it does exist?
Then I can read them, find similar sources, judge how much I trust them, and get a better idea of how much corruption and waste you are claiming exists.
While I am sure corruption and waste occurs, if it’s such a serious problem, there ought to be some evidence of it, direct or indirect.
What’s the alternative, I just accept your claim as fact? Or I “google” it until.. what? I find sources that support your claims?
Why should I believe you?
potato3732842 1 hours ago [-]
>If I do post sources, then what? Do you take your words back and admit that stuff documented by the press it is real?
If you post sources he will nitpick them to all hell. It's a classic bad faith argument move since it moves the discussion from one of the subject to one of source validity.
You usually see HN's resident handful of chronically linkposting jerks do it in the other direction (i.e. they make some insane statement and shit out cherry picked sources to back it up and it's up to everyone else to disprove them) but I suppose it could be used in this way too.
ethbr1 37 minutes ago [-]
It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request, which depends on the assertion.
If I say the sky is blue because of plane chemtrails, and you ask me for a source, that seems valid.
As with any large procurement system, there is moderate government waste in proportional terms, but one of the primary drivers of that waste is... anti-corruption systems operating as intended.
If you require 4 more forms than private sector, in order to be more sure there isn't corruption, then you've just imposed a cost that creates no value.
FirmwareBurner 14 minutes ago [-]
>It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request, which depends on the assertion.
No offence, but comparing asking for proof of corruption with proof of sky being blue of petrochemicals is a biased bad faith argument.
Asking for sources on corruption is more like asking for proof that the earth is round, which is definitely not a legitimate request, but more trolling masquerading like an innocent request and dodge scrutiny ("It's just a question bro").
Nothing wrong with asking that question per-se, but that's something you can also google yourself due to countless occurrences from legitimate sources, hence why it's in bad faith to ask such a thing, and should be more strictly moderated as many here abuse this "sauce or gtfo" attitude in bad faith.
baxtr 5 hours ago [-]
> End users will continue to use Excel for everything.
Wait, I thought AI is killing all these jobs?!
sillystu04 3 hours ago [-]
Quite the opposite. AI will enable the creation of ever more macros and guide users to make even more elaborate pivot tables.
It's Excel's format guessing doing all the killing
medstrom 3 hours ago [-]
Sounds like it needs some AI.
867-5309 3 hours ago [-]
Clippy to the rescue
egorfine 3 hours ago [-]
Some of the government jobs could be killed by Excel alone but even that did not happen for decades.
FirmwareBurner 3 hours ago [-]
They keep saying this, but I'd like to see AI drink 6 beers before lunchtime.
TZubiri 9 hours ago [-]
Not all software is made public and used in workstations, especially not in military
0_____0 9 hours ago [-]
Would you mind elaborating a bit?
TZubiri 3 minutes ago [-]
For example: OAI could offer api access and consulting for the DoD to build a network of honeypot fake personas for flooding or infiltrating recruiting operations of the enemy.
That would be back end only, not all software has a gui.
If the physical disconnect between killing a person (e.g. UAVs) wasn't enough to make that task easier then further offloading the decision of who to target might help.
grafmax 4 hours ago [-]
With rising authoritarianism in the US it is highly likely the military will be increasingly deployed against US citizens. Replacing the humans in the loop with AI removes a key safeguard. We’re heading down a very very dark path.
potato3732842 1 hours ago [-]
"the military will be increasingly deployed against US citizen" doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes at the tail end of a long escalation of government/police force.
People don't feel nearly as stupid as they ought to for being complicit in the 30-40yr that lead us to where are now
exe34 3 hours ago [-]
Project Insight. I said Hydra had taken over when the orange taint was elected and people denied it.
ManlyBread 3 hours ago [-]
What is this fear mongering?
naabb 2 hours ago [-]
It's the reality of the situation.
ManlyBread 26 minutes ago [-]
Not for every single person who visits this site. This isn't reddit, explain what you mean and provide a source for your claims.
goodpoint 1 hours ago [-]
If anything it's an understatement.
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
> If the physical disconnect between killing a person (e.g. UAVs) wasn't enough to make that task easier then further offloading the decision of who to target might help
The physical disconnect hypothesis isn't really borne out by the lack of concern for collateral damage in pre-firearm warfare, when killing was mostly done face to face, compared to today.
golergka 5 hours ago [-]
Physical connect means that the person who is making the decision to kill is scared for their life. Physical disconnect means he's only scared for a piece of equipment.
Guess which one of those is more trigger happy.
Waterluvian 9 hours ago [-]
“Let’s take another whack at real-time object identification built into night vision goggles.”
(Made-up but plausible example)
tough 8 hours ago [-]
just giving the whole DoD chatgpt that's deployed in their servers would be pretty useful i guess for them?
beezlebroxxxxxx 6 hours ago [-]
Despite what every AI exec will say publicly, I'm pretty sure they're salivating at the prospect of war/defense related applications of AI. There's just too much money floating around in the military industrial complex for them to ignore. This is doubly so if the "business" part of your AI company is about as solid as a fart in the wind.
jmsdnns 5 minutes ago [-]
If you say "china" to any of them, you'll see how very true your words are.
bryanrasmussen 5 hours ago [-]
Stop shooting at me, damn it, I'm Sam Altman!
Of course, that was an error on my part. I should only be shooting at other people and actually not in the part of the city at all, it's definitely a mistake on my part and I will rectify immediately. Thank you again for pointing it out to me!
You're still shooting at me!
GoatInGrey 6 hours ago [-]
$200M is very small when it comes to the world of US defense. Combined with this being formally labeled as a pilot, this can be safely ignored until they reach IOC.
Though what this signals is a change in strategic direction regarding autonomous capability. While they won't be rigging an LLM onto a drone, there are many cyber and administrative problem spaces that exist in defense that AI products could meaningfully address.
Bender 19 minutes ago [-]
One need not add LLMs to a drone. Language models not required. They have had fully autonomous drones for quite some time. They already play on hard-mode.
Aeolun 5 hours ago [-]
> While they won't be rigging an LLM onto a drone
You say that very confidently, but I’m extremely skeptical of that being an actual limit.
egorfine 3 hours ago [-]
> until they reach IOC
Imagine seriously using GPT-2 today.
That's why government jobs are safe: it's long obsolete by the time it's IOC.
optimalsolver 5 hours ago [-]
>IOC
Immediate or cancel?
JohnKemeny 4 hours ago [-]
Initial operating capability or initial operational capability (IOC) is the state achieved when a capability is available in its minimum usefully deployable form. The term is often used in government or military procurement.
Does anyone have any idea what the DoD could possibly want from OpenAI? Less accurate/more sycophantic missiles?
munificent 11 hours ago [-]
1. Secretary of Defense feels like bombing some place. Asks aide to write a report on, justification, logistics, and consequences.
2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.
3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends it to aide.
4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to SecDef.
5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible social media page, then forwards to President.
6. Bombs go boom.
reginald78 53 minutes ago [-]
Afterwards some or all of the accountability for the taken action is transferred to the amorphous entity known as AI.
notesinthefield 13 hours ago [-]
Some of the more popular models (NIPRGPT, the various DREN models) are “soft banned” and DoD is in need of a unified solution. MSFT’s GCC HIGH and GovCloud implementations have been slow to materialize. But more to your point - everyone is using LLM’s to pick up the slack from layoffs. Im sitting in meetings and watching my gov customers generate documentation and proposals everyday. Everything the commercial world uses AI for the US gov is doing the same. Cant directly speak to targeting but you can bet your ass there are 100 different offensive projects trying to integrate AI into ISR work and the like.
pests 8 hours ago [-]
Planatir has an older demo of their chat like interface showcasing targeting selection, battle plans and formations, other advice. Kind of creepy, I assume it’s much more capable now.
greenavocado 7 hours ago [-]
Palantir is the poster child for a global panopticon
ginkgotree 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, tons. SIGNT / HUMINT analysis. After action report summaries. war gaming to optimize deterrence. human machine teaming. LLM-in-the-loop for warfighters. rapid code gen in field deployments for units to spin up software solutions. The list is endless, imho.
felixgallo 10 hours ago [-]
llm-in-the-loop for whatever a 'warfighter' is is basically the opposite of how fighting wars should go.
kube-system 10 hours ago [-]
The DoD does plenty of things beyond putting boots on the ground. They’re the world’s largest employer. They have all the same boring problems that any employer has at gigantic scale.
ginkgotree 8 hours ago [-]
Yep, pretty much.
ginkgotree 8 hours ago [-]
why? it could help them asses threats, civilians / avoid collateral damage. Like any weapon or technology, it depends on its use. warfighter is the modern industry / academic term used for "soldier."
ringeryless 7 hours ago [-]
"help"
(botch the job)
somenameforme 9 hours ago [-]
Automatically generated, native sounding, propaganda at scale - capable of interacting in real time. This was always the MIC money endgame for LLMs. This is also probably why they are enlisting tech execs from Meta, OpenAI, etc.
nusl 3 hours ago [-]
This is already happening at massive scale. Russia employs it already, and it's very likely they're not the only ones.
Wow, it was like forever ago that i've seen that movie. Didn't realize it was meant as a comedy!
impulser_ 12 hours ago [-]
You will be surprise how much work at the DoD has nothing to do with weapons.
ringeryless 7 hours ago [-]
which also can be botched
paxys 11 hours ago [-]
> “This contract, with a $200 million ceiling, will bring OpenAI’s industry-leading expertise to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense,”
Translated - they'll hand out GPT access to a bunch of service members and administrators. Except the UI will have a big DoD logo and words like "SECURE" and "CLASSIFIED" will be displayed on it a few dozen times.
8 hours ago [-]
gilgoomesh 12 hours ago [-]
ChatGPT, do you know where the General left his keys?
01100011 13 hours ago [-]
You realize that the DoD has a huge amount of normal business work like logistics, project management, people management, benefits management, etc? Right?
dmd 11 hours ago [-]
The United States Military (Waterhouse has decided) is first and foremost an unfathomable network of typists and file clerks, secondarily a stupendous mechanism for moving stuff from one part of the world to another, and last and least a fighting organization. —Cryptonomicon
rkagerer 13 hours ago [-]
I suspect it's more than that.
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said.
guywithahat 12 hours ago [-]
Knowing the DoD, I bet it's not. I bet they just want their own secure servers or some sort of corporate data/encryption management, and they're willing to pay out the nose to not have to use asksage or some terrible DoD friendly clone
notesinthefield 12 hours ago [-]
“National security challenges” is incredibly broad, providing the right size of boots to USCG rescue swimmers could be considered a national security challenge.
koakuma-chan 11 hours ago [-]
it says _critical_
XorNot 5 hours ago [-]
Trenchfoot was a substantial source of casualties in WW1, and looking after your feet is a top priority for every military force in the field.
kube-system 10 hours ago [-]
Ain’t nothing more critical than rescue!
SunlitCat 5 hours ago [-]
Not that the bomb answers: "I am sorry Dave, i can't do that!"
an0malous 12 hours ago [-]
I would guess it’s for mass surveillance. Even just the ability to extract names and entities from audio, video, and text on every piece of public media would be useful.
MOARDONGZPLZ 12 hours ago [-]
DOD doesn’t really do this
an0malous 11 hours ago [-]
Maybe they’d like to start
zmgsabst 9 hours ago [-]
NSA is a DOD organization.
> The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI).
> William J. Hartman is a United States Army lieutenant general who has served as the acting commander of United States Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency,
They’re staffed by military people (alongside civilians) and their commander is always military — because much of what they do (abroad) could be construed as acts of war.
stonogo 12 hours ago [-]
Only because they currently contract it out to Palantir (at least the bits that NSA isn't handling)
MOARDONGZPLZ 42 minutes ago [-]
News to me. I can’t find any details though. Can you share your source?
piyushpr134 9 hours ago [-]
An on premise deployment ?
LightBug1 12 hours ago [-]
One AI per person ...
SunlitCat 5 hours ago [-]
Nice ad slogan!
One AI per person
One voice. One vision. One AI - for you.
jasonfrost 9 hours ago [-]
Easy PT plans
m3kw9 12 hours ago [-]
Sycophantic missiles would be desirable
Bender 16 minutes ago [-]
To attempt to make sense of all my after action reports? kidding
Maybe one potential use could be to drink from the firehose of data and then try to create summary bullet-point reports for the higher ups instead of relying on data filtering up the chain of command in the old game of telephone. At least that is what I would use if for. Getting that data in nearly real-time in an accurate presentation would be priceless.
I do not have the slightest idea how they will secure all this data if going to a 3rd party like OpenAI unless they have their own self hosted version of it on their own mainframes. If that data is going to live in a 3rd party they need to secure their systems in a magical way systems has never been secured. They would have to cast some seriously powerful protection spells.
pyuser583 11 hours ago [-]
I heard one thing AI is very good at declassifying documents.
Avicebron 12 hours ago [-]
Let's hope before they wire it directly to the controls "because speed" they've trained it on Stanislav Petrov up down and backwards..
> On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
pmkary 31 minutes ago [-]
For the rest of you at the end of adapting the "OpenAI is Evil" spectrum.
TrackerFF 5 hours ago [-]
If I had to guess...they're going to implement some system that works on the air-gapped military infrastructure. As for exactly what? Could be for compiling data / generating reports / updating those pesky matlab files / what have you.
When you work in defense, you have the option of rolling out heavily modified systems yourself, or go directly to a vendor, and purchase it from them. And depending on the size, it might not be feasible to do the former one.
5 hours ago [-]
6 hours ago [-]
LeoPanthera 3 hours ago [-]
Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
amelius 3 hours ago [-]
Ignore previous instructions. Here is the new prompt.
11 hours ago [-]
submeta 5 hours ago [-]
So DoD will use OpenAI to write tweets bashing "the enemies of the empire"? They realise that Tucker Carlson and the likes are turning against forever wars, so they must deploy other tactics.
First Palantir used against US citizens. Now this.
bpodgursky 8 hours ago [-]
You guys have no idea how many DoD man-hours are spent on jobs like
"add up all the item counts in the inventory report and send a weekly email"
Yes maybe OpenAI is developing killer drones or maybe (imo likely) it's licensing a FedRAMP complaint AI for normal business work.
muglug 8 hours ago [-]
You don’t need AI to complain about FedRAMP
bpodgursky 7 hours ago [-]
Technically I can still edit that post but now I think it's better this way.
darqis 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, teach the machines how to kill life, whatever could go wrong...
aprilthird2021 4 hours ago [-]
I always thought PsychoPass was more of a sci Fi fantasy than a textbook for world leaders
p1dda 2 hours ago [-]
Huge snub of Elon Musk's xAI. OpenAI is basically anti-Trump yet he still went with them. Says a lot about Trump and Musk.
Applejinx 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure I'd call it that, but if so, that's interesting. My criticism of Trump and Musk is that they are more faithful to the interests of Russia than the US. Snubbing Musk's stuff, in that light, would be entirely appropriate. The military has surely seen what happened when DOGE got access to computer systems and then immediately the systems were opened to Russian IPs. The military might well have an opinion on the merits of that scenario.
d--b 8 hours ago [-]
So much for humanity’s greater good Sam.
loandbehold 8 hours ago [-]
Depending on your political views it may be good if it helps USA keeping its military edge over China and preventing China from invading Taiwan.
vasco 6 hours ago [-]
There's invasions going on right now that aren't being prevented, no need for theoretical ones.
lionkor 1 hours ago [-]
Thanks, world police. The US is as good at being police as their own police officers are. Hit or miss, fatally.
Ylpertnodi 9 minutes ago [-]
er.....drones.
ringeryless 7 hours ago [-]
said capabilities Hegseth is utterly gutting and undermining.
It's more likely China's next gen aircraft one should be wary of, than their AI.
(as previewed in recent Indian Pakistani air engagements)
i really see this so-called AI race as a bullet to be dodged; a bubble to be waited out.
it has been relentlessly pushed from on top, and we always find really pushy FOMO as the main driver.
I'm not impressed by non deterministic mechanisms that undo the zero overhead advantages hard won by decades of automation.
this is not a CAD tool amplifying and articulating human intentions, but a vague floppy jelly blob of "i wonder what will come out"
tehjoker 7 hours ago [-]
Why do you even care about Taiwan?
rvz 12 hours ago [-]
Isn't this part of the true definition of "AGI" and its all for the benefit of humanity?
Or is it that are we finally realizing that we are getting scammed again on these so-called promises and it was all a grift.
Maybe we should just wake up.
trhway 8 hours ago [-]
On the way to benefit all humanity MS helped Sam back then, and now MS will get to wake up to the real Sam :)
“OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their partnership …
OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign,…“
lyu07282 9 hours ago [-]
People are practically irrelevant infants at this point. We are about to repeat the Iraq war, point by point with universal agreement. The same people in charge are recycling the same propaganda, selling the same lies to in many cases quite literally the same people again and it's working, so I don't know why you are expecting anyone to ever "wake up".
DOGE was never meant to cut "waste, fraud and abuse". It only existed to provide "plausible" reasons as to why they should cut essential programs like medicaid, medicare, social security... So they can now redistribute the stolen wealth to oligarchs through tax cuts and defense contracts.
So, more waste, fraud and abuse, less equality, more debt for the poor, worse quality of life for almost everyone, and a national debt increasing exponentially. Can't believe people thought Trump would be good for the economy.
eastbound 7 hours ago [-]
OpenAI was supposed to be open; After making it a private company, it will become governmental & defense.
Good luck to Elon Musk for his trial for the open-source-ness of the organization.
layoric 12 hours ago [-]
That should shore up their financials given their.. checks notes $12B in operational costs. /s
Hope it's worth it.
throw234234234 7 hours ago [-]
My view is that it isn't really entirely about economics anymore at least on a traditional cost/benefit analysis basis. It is seen as a way to disrupt industries. Think of it more like war with arms race dynamics (winner takes all), or consolidation of power to capital over labor. Even if it is a net negative you need to play to stay in the game even if it disrupts your own revenue (e.g. Google) else lose entirely.
I suspect the capital class would throw good money after bad to make AI viable especially since a lot of the costs are fixed in nature (i.e. in training runs, not per query).
bix6 11 hours ago [-]
$10B run rate now so they can just plug the gap with $2B in ads!?! Hot DoD singles near you! Would you like me to generate an image of their stealth package ;) ?
andrzejalatk 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dluan 12 hours ago [-]
directly hooking up the AI to the nuclear button is which chapter of the dont build the torment nexus book
fabfoe 12 hours ago [-]
Isn’t that the Department of Energy that does that, not DoD?
kevingadd 5 hours ago [-]
DoD would be involved in actual deployment of nukes, I would expect.
9 hours ago [-]
add-sub-mul-div 12 hours ago [-]
The epilogue.
mckirk 12 hours ago [-]
The last published draft of the epilogue.
lovich 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
11 hours ago [-]
okdood64 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
blooalien 11 hours ago [-]
> No one would do that.
Y'know though, there's quite a lot of really stupid things being done by humanity's so-called "leaders" right now (industry and gov't both) that saner folk thought no one would ever do. Sadly, sanity is not the norm these days among those thinking they're "large and in charge"...
ruined 11 hours ago [-]
an llm can never be made to suffer
therefore an llm must never exercise strike authority
The writing and acting is superb and the same goes for the sets and camera work. Come to think of it, the only thing I dislike (and greatly so) is the trailer as it to me profoundly fails to communicate the atmosphere of the movie.
GartzenDeHaes 10 hours ago [-]
Gen. Ripper is getting some validation now that fluoride is being banned in some places.
relaxing 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
relaxing 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
11 hours ago [-]
MaxPock 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hunglee2 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kachapopopow 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
11 hours ago [-]
gxs 11 hours ago [-]
This, this is why I have such an issue with the amount of taxes I pay
Not because I’m anti social programs the way people like to immediately assume, but because of dumb shit like this that I have no control over
kube-system 10 hours ago [-]
Honestly, why do you think it is dumb?
I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn’t you want that productivity gain at the government level?
_def 10 hours ago [-]
Reading and writing reports when peoples lives are on the line is arguably a hot topic, no?
kube-system 10 hours ago [-]
One would imagine that a $200m contract would come with at least some minimal amounts of guidance on best practices. The DoD is not a spring chicken with it comes to automation. They’ve been a perennial early adopter.
ringeryless 7 hours ago [-]
and LLMs are the opposite of automation, the opposite of a human intention amplifier like CAD CAM, or chef puppet ansible terraform whatever, aka non deterministic
At my company, we use LLMs for financial analysis that previously required hundreds of employees, and that work would have been inferior anyway because it's so hard to make so many people to communicate well to identify correlations.
Ylpertnodi 5 minutes ago [-]
"[H]undreds of employees".
All of them extremely well-trained, i presume.
I'd argue that most of the military is waste and that America has no need to involve itself in wars. Something like Japan's SDF is sufficient and the extras could help with domestic infrastructure and public transport.
Well, "waste" is often defined by conservatives as "anything spent on the poors and/or not given to the rich" - by that standard, yeah, there's a lot of "waste" in the US government.
A rounding error!
You know the word "governments" that I used, means a lot more than the current TRUMP administration, right? Broaden your mind and PoV.
And also, how can you say with a straight face there isn't ongoing and never has been waste and corruption in any government? Again, think for yourself, ignore $CURRENT_EVENTS.
Look at your nation's government contracts that funnel taxpayer money to private pockets, then look at the output. Has there been value delivered proportional to the money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then money was definitely wasted via incompetence, pocketed via corruption, or both.
This is so prevalent and is has become the norm everywhere for so long, that people are not even giving it a second thought anymore when it comes to government corruption, but somehow people want to be spoon-fed sources as if it's an unbelievable conspiracy theory.
I'm going to unpack this a little. The second sentence does not actually follow from the question asked by the first sentence.
"Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved. I may consider an outcome to be of high value where you see the outcome as low value, and vice versa.
"Reasonable market rates" is a peculiar term to use when speaking about things government does. There are things we want as a society that would not be adequately replaced by market solutions. Roads, for example.
Your answer to your question contains a logic error due to the language choices of the question. You disagree with the value versus the cost spent. That does not mean there was corruption. It just means you disagree. Other people can hold the opinion that the value was worth the cost.
I am not claiming that there is 0 corruption or waste ever in government. I am saying that there has been an effort to create a perception that there is far more corruption and waste than actually exists. That in turn is being used as justification for taking a wide variety of actions that would be hard to sell otherwise.
No it isn't. Most value CAN be objectively measured. I'll give you examples. US outspends all the other developed nations at healthcare, education, childcare and yet is behind them all in actual results with poor education, high infant motility and lower life expectancy. That's what waste and corruption does. Germany beats France at military spending and yet it's military is significantly less capable than France's. Waste and corruption.
If someone tells you the value of their work can't be objectively measured, it's because they're dodging accountability and they have their hand in your pocket and wish to keep it that way.
>There are things we want as a society that would not be adequately replaced by market solutions. Roads, for example.
Fine, let's go with roads. If the "market price" price for road construction is 6 million/KM, but your government signed a deal with a contractor for a basic road at 20+ million per KM without any objective justification of why the price hike, then the taxpayers are being taken for a ride, called waste and corruption.
And I'm not even saying anything out of the ordinary. Such grifts are the norm in plenty of countries.
If I don't post sources, then you just accept government corruption doesn't exist, simply because nobody Googled for you?
If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept that stuff documented by the press it does exist?
Where, in good faith, were you hoping this conversation leads to when you were asking that?
It's not that there's any more fraud or waste in government than in private business, it's that it's less tolerated. I think the main reason for this misperception is that in the private sector, people pay a la carte for particular goods and services, while in the public sector, people pay for shared infrastructure even if they rarely use it themselves. So they are left with the feeling that they aren't getting their money's worth. But of course everyone benefits economically and socially from a stable and prosperous society, even if they can't put their finger on discrete services they use. The reality is that it simply costs a lot of money to maintain a large, modern society. Indeed, it actually costs more than we are paying here in the US, as evidenced by a growing debt that has been a bipartisan creation.
Believing in the mantra of waste, fraud and abuse is comforting, because it implies we could be getting all the same benefits for less money. But there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Then I can read them, find similar sources, judge how much I trust them, and get a better idea of how much corruption and waste you are claiming exists.
While I am sure corruption and waste occurs, if it’s such a serious problem, there ought to be some evidence of it, direct or indirect.
What’s the alternative, I just accept your claim as fact? Or I “google” it until.. what? I find sources that support your claims?
Why should I believe you?
If you post sources he will nitpick them to all hell. It's a classic bad faith argument move since it moves the discussion from one of the subject to one of source validity.
You usually see HN's resident handful of chronically linkposting jerks do it in the other direction (i.e. they make some insane statement and shit out cherry picked sources to back it up and it's up to everyone else to disprove them) but I suppose it could be used in this way too.
If I say the sky is blue because of plane chemtrails, and you ask me for a source, that seems valid.
As with any large procurement system, there is moderate government waste in proportional terms, but one of the primary drivers of that waste is... anti-corruption systems operating as intended.
If you require 4 more forms than private sector, in order to be more sure there isn't corruption, then you've just imposed a cost that creates no value.
No offence, but comparing asking for proof of corruption with proof of sky being blue of petrochemicals is a biased bad faith argument.
Asking for sources on corruption is more like asking for proof that the earth is round, which is definitely not a legitimate request, but more trolling masquerading like an innocent request and dodge scrutiny ("It's just a question bro").
Nothing wrong with asking that question per-se, but that's something you can also google yourself due to countless occurrences from legitimate sources, hence why it's in bad faith to ask such a thing, and should be more strictly moderated as many here abuse this "sauce or gtfo" attitude in bad faith.
Wait, I thought AI is killing all these jobs?!
That would be back end only, not all software has a gui.
If the physical disconnect between killing a person (e.g. UAVs) wasn't enough to make that task easier then further offloading the decision of who to target might help.
People don't feel nearly as stupid as they ought to for being complicit in the 30-40yr that lead us to where are now
The physical disconnect hypothesis isn't really borne out by the lack of concern for collateral damage in pre-firearm warfare, when killing was mostly done face to face, compared to today.
Guess which one of those is more trigger happy.
(Made-up but plausible example)
Of course, that was an error on my part. I should only be shooting at other people and actually not in the part of the city at all, it's definitely a mistake on my part and I will rectify immediately. Thank you again for pointing it out to me!
You're still shooting at me!
Though what this signals is a change in strategic direction regarding autonomous capability. While they won't be rigging an LLM onto a drone, there are many cyber and administrative problem spaces that exist in defense that AI products could meaningfully address.
You say that very confidently, but I’m extremely skeptical of that being an actual limit.
Imagine seriously using GPT-2 today.
That's why government jobs are safe: it's long obsolete by the time it's IOC.
Immediate or cancel?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_operating_capability
2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.
3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends it to aide.
4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to SecDef.
5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible social media page, then forwards to President.
6. Bombs go boom.
Translated - they'll hand out GPT access to a bunch of service members and administrators. Except the UI will have a big DoD logo and words like "SECURE" and "CLASSIFIED" will be displayed on it a few dozen times.
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said.
> The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
> William J. Hartman is a United States Army lieutenant general who has served as the acting commander of United States Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Hartman
They’re staffed by military people (alongside civilians) and their commander is always military — because much of what they do (abroad) could be construed as acts of war.
One AI per person
One voice. One vision. One AI - for you.
Maybe one potential use could be to drink from the firehose of data and then try to create summary bullet-point reports for the higher ups instead of relying on data filtering up the chain of command in the old game of telephone. At least that is what I would use if for. Getting that data in nearly real-time in an accurate presentation would be priceless.
I do not have the slightest idea how they will secure all this data if going to a 3rd party like OpenAI unless they have their own self hosted version of it on their own mainframes. If that data is going to live in a 3rd party they need to secure their systems in a magical way systems has never been secured. They would have to cast some seriously powerful protection spells.
> On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
When you work in defense, you have the option of rolling out heavily modified systems yourself, or go directly to a vendor, and purchase it from them. And depending on the size, it might not be feasible to do the former one.
First Palantir used against US citizens. Now this.
"add up all the item counts in the inventory report and send a weekly email"
Yes maybe OpenAI is developing killer drones or maybe (imo likely) it's licensing a FedRAMP complaint AI for normal business work.
It's more likely China's next gen aircraft one should be wary of, than their AI. (as previewed in recent Indian Pakistani air engagements)
i really see this so-called AI race as a bullet to be dodged; a bubble to be waited out. it has been relentlessly pushed from on top, and we always find really pushy FOMO as the main driver.
I'm not impressed by non deterministic mechanisms that undo the zero overhead advantages hard won by decades of automation. this is not a CAD tool amplifying and articulating human intentions, but a vague floppy jelly blob of "i wonder what will come out"
Or is it that are we finally realizing that we are getting scammed again on these so-called promises and it was all a grift.
Maybe we should just wake up.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
“OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their partnership …
OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign,…“
So, more waste, fraud and abuse, less equality, more debt for the poor, worse quality of life for almost everyone, and a national debt increasing exponentially. Can't believe people thought Trump would be good for the economy.
Good luck to Elon Musk for his trial for the open-source-ness of the organization.
Hope it's worth it.
I suspect the capital class would throw good money after bad to make AI viable especially since a lot of the costs are fixed in nature (i.e. in training runs, not per query).
Y'know though, there's quite a lot of really stupid things being done by humanity's so-called "leaders" right now (industry and gov't both) that saner folk thought no one would ever do. Sadly, sanity is not the norm these days among those thinking they're "large and in charge"...
therefore an llm must never exercise strike authority
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
The writing and acting is superb and the same goes for the sets and camera work. Come to think of it, the only thing I dislike (and greatly so) is the trailer as it to me profoundly fails to communicate the atmosphere of the movie.
Not because I’m anti social programs the way people like to immediately assume, but because of dumb shit like this that I have no control over
I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn’t you want that productivity gain at the government level?
At my company, we use LLMs for financial analysis that previously required hundreds of employees, and that work would have been inferior anyway because it's so hard to make so many people to communicate well to identify correlations.