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p0rty-Boi t1_j93jmpc wrote

Growing up the sentiment was that the military would be 10 years ahead on everything. That would put them really deep into singularity territory. Chat GPT would be great for astroturfing and reading threat assessments from online forums. I bet they have some pretty gnarly tech they’ve kept hidden.

Edit: what if the singularity’s first job was hiding itself? I’m reminded of the British code breakers in WW2 that let allied soldiers die to preserve the illusion that their codes were still intact.

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BinyaminDelta t1_j93n28q wrote

This is largely a Hollywood myth, though. Ask anybody with time in the military: Most things are BEHIND by years or decades.

Now an agency like the NSA, this may be more accurate. But much of the U.S. military is still using 20-year-old (or older!) solutions.

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[deleted] t1_j94eiyp wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_j94oqxt wrote

The military is ahead of civilian tech in some areas but not all areas. For instance, they are working with Microsoft to create AR heads up displays for soldiers. If they were ten years ahead they wouldn't need to contract with a private entity.

Additionally, no amount of money by the government can make up for the fact that there's are far more civilians working on certain fields, like AI. The civilians will likely come out with the tech sooner because there are more of them.

The basics of the atom bomb was discovered by civilians. It was only after they went to the government and described what was possible that the military began engineering the bomb.

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SoylentRox t1_j94gme9 wrote

The problem is that if the military actually has singularity technology +10 years from now, they would have deaged all their veterans on re-enlistment, be building massive networks of bunkers and missile defense batteries with self replicating robots, and so on and so forth.
The current reality simply doesn't show any sign that they have this tech. And this is because the defense contractors that pay AI coders offer about 180k annually for someone with 5 years experience. Deepmind would pay 500k for that.

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[deleted] t1_j94hp61 wrote

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SoylentRox t1_j94iknl wrote

They don't have it. The probability that they do is a flat 0.

Reasons:

AI is very advanced innovation that is also a collaboration between AI labs. You are not going to do that in secret.

They can't pay enough.

They do not have the budget allocated for GPUs.

Did you know that Google, Meta, and Microsoft have combined annual revenues close to the entire Department of Defense? The NSA annual budget is a mere 65 billion, chump change. Google alone pulls 280. The entire black budget is only another 50.

They are too poor.

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[deleted] t1_j94ku9e wrote

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SoylentRox t1_j94lra8 wrote

>But we can agree to disagree.

You're wrong. Your whole argument is "they could have somehow kept thousands of people working on this in secret". Sure, and they could have secret antigravity research.

Publicly the DoD says they are far behind and need more money. And there is zero evidence for your theory.

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[deleted] t1_j94nqzd wrote

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SoylentRox t1_j94p4em wrote

to have +10 years of technology would take thousands of people.

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[deleted] t1_j94prao wrote

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SoylentRox t1_j94pupb wrote

Dude you can go look at deepmind papers and count names. Or try to write the smallest change to current SoTA AI code. A few geniuses will not cut it.

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SgathTriallair t1_j94oyi3 wrote

He's obviously a conspiracy theorist, so I'm not sure logic will work. I'm sure he'll start talking about HARP soon.

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SoylentRox t1_j94pgdt wrote

Right. And the issue with their position is that while it's possible for the government to have amazing things that are a secret, in reality most of the few secrets they did create leaked all over the place. For example the F-117 - tons of mentions in the press long before unveiling.

It's telling there are no mentions of anything indicating an AGI.

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p0rty-Boi t1_j94qs7c wrote

You act like these efforts are not thoroughly infiltrated and supervised by the DOD already. A handful of discrete government liaisons supervising the efforts of these companies and harvesting their research in the name of national security has got to be a given. It’s not a stretch that there’s a lab with incredibly competent government scientists working to integrate this research that has already far surpassed what is public knowledge.

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SoylentRox t1_j94uk6g wrote

So for the last sentence you need to provide some evidence. If the lizard people are running the government in secret, how do you know?

For the rest, sure. Nothing is magic about llms, the government could replicate the effort with a skunkworks.

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p0rty-Boi t1_j94v1sz wrote

Lol. You think the government is gonna let American corporations make agi right under their nose without getting a piece? It’s the key to winning the next great conflict and they will leave no stone unturned to try and get there first. You are incredibly naive.

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SoylentRox t1_j94v8nd wrote

I believe the government is stupid, yes, and is in fact doing exactly this. It is possible they will lose their sovereignty as a side effect.

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p0rty-Boi t1_j96r3za wrote

“This”? I can’t tell if you are agreeing with me or not. A little more specificity and context is required from your response.

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SoylentRox t1_j96rmoj wrote

Failing to pay for top AI talent or funding large scale research projects to find a general AI. Or investing in all the infrastructure it takes to even make good software in the first place. AI research is 1 part genius researchers, 10 parts support staff.

The reason is the government doesn't realize the danger. They assume AI progress will continue to be linear and it took 70 years to get a machine capable of language.

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p0rty-Boi t1_j96rrow wrote

Why pay for research when you can compel corporations to hand it over for free?

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chippingtommy t1_j9tn640 wrote

Yeah, millitary tech has different requirements to civilian tech. Rugged, stable and reliable usually takes precedence over cutting edge.

Defence contractors who make pure custom millitary silicon will still market it for civilian use if they can find a market for it, its just unlikely that silicon that can survive extreme heat or extreme g-loads has a civilian market.

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SoylentRox t1_j94gr7s wrote

> That would put them really deep into singularity territory.

There is no sign that they have this. It would be impossible to miss. Unfortunately this appears to be completely false.

From the recruiters who have contacted me for AI/defense roles, the reason is obvious. They cannot offer remotely competitive compensation. Any AI coders they have are terrible.

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