> We have prior art that says humans don't just launch all the nukes just because the computers or procedures say to.

previously no-one had spent trillions of dollars trying to convince the world that those computers were "Artificial Intelligence"

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nine_k 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They had to do with "state-of-the-art radars", "military-grade communication systems", etc.

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

Or "alignment" which means "let's ensure the AIs recommend launching nukes only when it makes sense to, based on our [assumed objective] values"

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Barrin92 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

of course they did. That's the literal topic of War Games (1983). You should actually be somewhat reassured that we aren't living during the era of Dr. Strangelove where you had characters in the military industrial complex who were significantly more insane when it came to the beliefs of what computer systems and nukes can do.

There was a time when people wanted to dig tunnels with nukes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

	▲	roenxi 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> There was a time when people wanted to dig tunnels with nukes The article seems to be about mining rather than tunnelling. And the issue with the idea being? We also dig using explosives, there isn't an in-principle problem. Reading the wiki article it looks like the yields were excessive, but at the end of the day mining involves the use of things that go boom. It is easy to imagine small nukes having a place in the industry.
	▲	idiotsecant 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Digging tunnels with nukes sounds better to me than shooting them at each other!