brianeyci wrote:You chopped paragraphs into sentences with no context Jadeite. I never claimed that lines of code are related to functionality. The point was to mention a programmer could hide a piece of code in AI to commandeer the plane, and nobody could check except for the said programmer because of the huge mass of information.
Other programmers could check it. Look at the reviewing process that the space shuttle goes through after all, when they do something as simple as update internal clocks.
At least you can conduct a background check on pilots. "They can do that anyway" is not a rebuttal at all: you don't make a bad situation worse.
And you can do background checks on programmers as well. I'm going to ask you this: How many incidents of sabotage has there been in the military regarding automated systems? How many pilots have defected? If you need help answering that, I suggest looking at that list that was posted.
You're claiming that pilots that can and have defected and often compromising tons of classified data that belongs to their former countries, is somehow preferable to your assumption that a programmer
might somehow successfully sabotage an autonomous aircraft. Ignoring of course, the fact that he's most likely going to get caught after the fact (unless he flees the country first, in which case everything he worked on is going to get a close lookover I imagine).
Why don't you prove this increased capability?
By simple virtue of not having to keep a human alive, an aircraft could potentially conduct accelerations and manuevers that would cause a human pilot to blackout. By getting rid of a pilot, you also get rid of the canopy (an F-22 canopy is 360 lbs), ejection system, seat, and life support system. That's just for a plane similar to the F-22. When you start looking at long range aircraft like B-52s, Tu-160s, etc, which have multiple crew members, the amount of saved space and weight increases dramatically. In the case of an automated equivalent to a Tu-160, automating it would get rid of four crew, a galley, rest bunk, and toilet (and all the systems required to keep them alive and happy). It probably totals to a few thousand lbs that could be elimated.
Anyway, all this saved space and weight could be used for other things, like fuel, bombs, or eliminated entirely in an automated equivalent to result in a smaller and lighter aircraft.
That's right dickhead. If a blast door will do, no point in a forcefield. What part of that don't you understand?
Except in this case the "blast door" is obsolete.
It's also strange AI wankers ignore the accidental and even eventual upload of sentient AI. You know what that is? Slavery. That would be my prime concern if I was an AI wanker, to protect my fucking children and creations, but AI wankers seem to want AI in every possible context without considering the consequences. If I was an AI wanker I would want the AI to grow up with human beings, in a human-like body and go through some of the same things humans do to learn compassion, empathy, loyalty, and in this case patriotism. For some reason AI wankers think this will all just shit out with no guidance.
Why are you assuming it'd be sentient? While I will of course, defer to Starglider on this if he thinks differently, it seems to me that all an automated aircraft would need to do is:
1. Have sensory awareness of its surroundings.
2. Have a threat library.
3. Have a library of manuevers and tactics.
4. Have the ability to select an appropriate response based on 2-3.
So let's say an automated fighter is approaching a target, and the enemy sends up an interceptor. The AF detects it with the wide variety of sensors it has available, analyzes it and matches it to something in its threat library. It then selects an appropriate weapon and fires. If it has the speed, altitude, stealth, and BVR capability of an F-22, then most likely it does this from beyond a range that the enemy can reply to, and won't even need to do combat manuevers.
In the rear, you could have an AWACs (human controlled or not) that provides continuous information updates to the fighters. All of this could probably be accomplished with something that's not even remotely approaching sentience. It doesn't need to be smart, it just needs to be fast and accurate.
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