A lot of great inventions we now take for granted initially came with little motivation other than being able to kill each other more effectively. GPS, radar, jet engines, drones, super glue, microwaves, canned food, computers, even the internet. Contrary to the narrative of the internet being about sharing science, ARPANET was pushed by the DoD as a means of maintaining comms during nuclear war. It was then adopted by universities and research labs and started along the trajectory most are more familiar with.

The tale of computers is even more absurd. The first programmable, electric, and general-purpose digital computer was ENIAC. [1] It was built to... calculate artillery firing tables. I expect in the future that the idea of putting a bunch of solar into space to run GPUs for LLMs will probably seem, at the minimum - quaint, but that doesn't mean the story ends there.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

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saratogacx 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the Colossus[1] predated the ENIAC but is still in line with your general theme of doing stuff for the military. In this case it was used for cipher breaking, not firing calculations.

You could argue that it doesn't really count though because it was only turing complete in theory: "A Colossus computer was thus not a fully Turing complete machine. However, University of San Francisco professor Benjamin Wells has shown that if all ten Colossus machines made were rearranged in a specific cluster, then the entire set of computers could have simulated a universal Turing machine, and thus be Turing complete."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

	▲	pantalaimon 4 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> You could argue that it doesn't really count though because it was only turing complete in theory Then you have to also count the Z3 which predates the Colossus by 2 years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)
	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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Peaches4Rent 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, but as Ron Perlman famously said in the beginning of Fallout, "War never changes".

I would be more shocked that we eliminated war than if we achieved this version of Elon's future.

It makes sense to think that we will continue to make scientific progress through war and self defense.

Reason being, nothing is more motivating than wanting to survive

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King-Aaron 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm starting to wonder if a person like Elon with his... morals... is who we want to be creating a vision for the future.

	▲	vibeprofessor a minute ago \| parent [-]
		the paragon of virtue here has spoken

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somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not to go heads I win, tails you lose, but even if we go down this path - it's the same story because militaries are investing heavily in LLM stuff, both overtly and covertly. Outside of its obvious uses in modeling, data management, and other such things - there also seems to be a fairly widespread belief, among the powers that be, that if you just say the magic words to somebody, that you can make them believe anything. So hyper-scaling LLM potential has direct military application, same as Starlink and Starship.

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WalterBright 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The digital internet began with the telegraphy network in the early 1800s.

Many, many network protocols were developed and used.

	▲	littlestymaar an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> with the telegraphy network in the early 1800s. Late 1700 actually, and war was indeed a key motivation for the deployment of the Télégraphe Chappe.
	▲	LPisGood 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Really? That is so interesting - which ones? Any ancestors of commonly used ones today?