Yet everyone is saying this about LLMs and coders

A little "How many people were soldiers in ancient Rome" type searches gave me these numbers...

16% of adult males in the Roman mid-republic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army_of_the_mid-Republic...), call that 8% of adults of all genders.

Wikipedia says that there's about 1.34 million people in active duty in the US military, out of about 342 million people, 21.5% of which are under 18. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces)

I think that's 0.5%? Down from 8% in ancient Rome?

But… it did do that.

> that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.

Our force structure shifted towards logistics and infrastructure from combatants as we moved up the weapon complexity hierarchy. First automatic guns, then tanks, then airplanes.

To a large extent, a tank or air crew is 50 guys waving off 1-5, while they sit back at base and do hobbies between bouts of mechanic labor. They’re not literally at home, but we do fight with small mechanized armies while most soldiers watch on from the base.

I don't know if this is your point, but we're hearing the same stores with AI. Do these people really mean what they say or are they just lying to paint themselves as honorable

Let's assume a nuclear exchange happens at some point during a war. There is a very high chance that this will cause an escalation leading to a nuclear apocalypse.

Since this result is presumably inevitable at increasing frequency, it's more like nukes prevented another major world war and stole a form of peace from the future, temporarily. That peace debt might be repaid with the end of everything.

It very much depends on where "here" is.

At least, it gives impunity to attack others with less fear of retaliation…

> no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war

Lots of talk in the UK recently about conscription.

Nuclear weapons traded a high probability of a major war for a low probability of an apocalyptic war.

My question is, how low is that probability, exactly? Because the tradeoff looks very different if it’s one in a million per year, versus one in a hundred per year.

My assessment, looking at the history and the close calls, is that it’s more like one in a hundred.

No, this does not apply to AI because they're not well intentioned and very open about it.

I think both things can simultaneously be true. There is a certain inevitability to technological progress. Once you reach a critical mass of collective knowledge, the resulting "thing" will get developed. If not by you, then by someone else.

But also, inevitability is not an argument for complicity. If you personally decide to work on bioweapons, I don't think you can shrug and say "eh, it was going to happen either way". As tech workers, we've really mastered the art of coming up with justifications for what essentially just boils down to "all my friends have gotten rich and now it's my turn".

I've met hundreds of sharp engineers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. None of them could look me straight in the eye and say "yeah, you know, what we're doing with ad tech is actually good". They just always had an explanation along the lines of "it's not that bad, and besides, if we don't do it, someone else will, and we're the good guys here".

That’s a weird tldr and not my takeaway. More like “scientists convinced their new ultra destructive weapon is sure to bring about peace this time around”. Spoiler: it does not. Arguably maybe nuclear weapons but even then I’d say the use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict hasn’t really been tested yet and people are generally hesitant to do so, preferring instead illegal chemical and biological warfare.

Reminds me a quote from Gibson's Spook Country: "That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: the most interesting applications turn up on the battlefield, or in a gallery."

  > The HN crowd is elated that we can finally finish our side projects, while the ruling class is

If you wanted the core of all of this... Check this book "Irrational Man" by William Barrett.

I just watched an episode of Babylon 5 in which an entire race gets wiped by a virus in that way In a matter of days.

Clincally proven bio-weapons

It has bio in the name - it must be good!

That means they're made from renewable resources, right?

> Like we have prehistoric skeletons with obvious signs of traumatic injury inflicted by tools.

No one is arguing that modern technology is the sole or even principal cause of military deaths. The argument is simply that technology has greatly facilitated the ease and scale.

Imagine a world without nuclear weapons, automatic weapons, rockets, and explosives (other than gunpowder). There would still be wars, certainly, but they would be a lot less destructive.