Advances in AI areas like computer vision seem to mostly come from academics who publish their work. Once an innovation is published, it is available for all to use or imitate. I don't see how a state actor is going to make some major AI advance that it is also able to conceal from other states.
I'd be particularly bearish on AI for grand strategy. If LLMs need billions of examples of text to outperform humans, an analogous war strategy AI would need to be trained on more examples of warfare than have been conducted in human history.
Yes, the invention mostly comes from academics, but also top ML/AI scientists hired by large corporations (who also publish their work from what I've seen).
While impressive I don’t think StarCraft and Diplomacy can be compared to an actual war.
Diplomacy especially has at most three actions that can be taken per turn (move, support, hold) maybe five if you include convoy and retreat. Generally each country does have pretty limited paths to win.
The impressive thing is the natural language processing of the AI and from what I read from one top diplomacy player the fact that the AI doesn’t try and take revenge when betrayed, doesn’t develop trust with any players or let any sort of subconscious feelings get in the way of its goal.
I don’t see a world where, as the article suggests, all war is automated.
I see a world where AI helps us be even more prepared for the last war, and equally unprepared for new wars.
FYI Authoritarianism will ultimately win, but not in the way you would expect. We will actually be given a great deal of freedom under its rule — perhaps more than we have under current democracy’s.
The twist is that the AI itself will ultimately become the Authoritarian. Unless technological progress comes to a screeching halt (nuclear obliteration, or what have you) this outcome is probably inevitable and probably even the best possible outcome.
I'd be particularly bearish on AI for grand strategy. If LLMs need billions of examples of text to outperform humans, an analogous war strategy AI would need to be trained on more examples of warfare than have been conducted in human history.