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Norion on 25 May 2026
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curl-6 said:
Norion said:

Right though what I'm saying is that only very recently has AI gained this level of capability in math so has now become capable of advancing mathematics. There are absolutely over optimistic predictions but something notable is the typical expectation among experts of when it'll happen has become a lot closer to the present the past few years. Due to the rapid advancement there is increasing expectation of it being achieved in the 2030's.

Them getting increasing autonomous capabilities is a recent development though and the usage of those capabilities has been making an impact so Ukraine isn't slowing down in continuing to develop those capabilities further. I think this is a very bad aspect of the technology to be clear but stuff like fully autonomous drones is the future of warfare and this seems to be an early taste of that.

To break my main point down fully the huge implications of drones in warfare starting to become autonomous combined with AI now being advanced enough to have a notable impact on things like coding, mathematics, cybersecurity and so on is why the technology is already a big deal. The main AI optimism argument is it'll continue improving over time but an increasing amount of big stuff is now real so aren't future hypotheticals any more.

Computer-assisted mathematics and autonomous weapons though are extensions of things that already existed without AI, and the application of AI to warfare in particular is fraught with potential problems; what happens when say AI misidentifies a target and kills friendlies or civilians for instance.

AI has thus far proven problematic in almost every area of society it's been shoehorned into; it can certainly be useful in some cases, but its pitfalls and limitations are numerous.

What's going on right now is the beginning of a truly massive shift though, like just last month Ukraine captured a Russian position using only ground robots and aerial drones for the first time so no infantry were needed. They're still mostly human controlled but every year autonomous capabilities are increasing so it'll get to a point where if a country doesn't care if civilians are harmed it could just send in swarms of drones and robots to cause mass destruction.

There are both significant downside and upsides currently. More than anything what I'm getting at is the technology is already powerful enough to do a lot of good and bad things. It's gotten to the point where a person can get a lot of utility out of it in positive ways to do good while another person can get a lot of utility out of it in negative ways to do bad.