The Horror of AI Generals Making Command Decisions
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com
Palantir, Anduril and a suite of other Tolkien-inspired tech nightmares want to integrate artificial intelligence into every aspect of the U.S. military. Both companies have software suites they’re pitching as agents that will help make command decisions during combat. An AI general, if you will.
Yes, that’s a terrible idea.
On this episode of Angry Planet, Cameron Hunter and Bleddyn Bowen will tell us why. Hunter is a researcher at the University of Copenhagen and Bowen is a professor of Astropolitics at Durham University. They’ve just written a paper that skewers the idea that AI will ever be able to make command decisions.
- The narrow definition of AI
- The folly of the AI general
- The games AI can’t win
- “Targeting things is a command decision”
- The IDF’s use of Microsoft’s use of AI systems
- “The enemy gets a vote”
- Killing more doesn’t mean winning more
- American military as a “glass tank”
- Matthew gets lost in a rant
- “They don’t even have an animal’s intelligence”
- The very real military uses of AI
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast. |
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| 0:39.1 | Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. |
| 0:42.9 | I am Matthew Galt. |
| 0:44.9 | Jason Fields is visiting Philadelphia for some reason. |
| 0:48.3 | But that's all right. |
| 0:49.1 | I've got two wonderful guests with me here today. |
| 0:51.6 | We're going to talk about artificial intelligence and the big |
| 0:56.0 | beautiful generals, folks, and why artificial intelligence perhaps can never be one. Can |
| 1:02.0 | you all introduce yourselves, Cameron, if you want to go first. Hello, I'm Cameron Hunter. I am a |
| 1:10.0 | postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, |
| 1:12.7 | where I mainly analysed the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force of China, but through a sociological perspective. |
| 1:21.1 | And occasionally I get together with Bledon and complain about artificial intelligence. |
| 1:27.5 | Hi, I'm Bledin Bowen. |
... |
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