[arjie]

> We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges. We used AI to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on and it gave us steps on what we have to do. We practiced a lot and kept asking questions. We dug holes and filled them with broken glass and fire to practice. 18 of us died in the process. Eight of us managed to do it. The next time we attacked, we could jump.

Now listen, I'm not saying we need to give these guys more AI, but it clearly isn't yielding bad outcomes for us here.

"You're absolutely correct! For it to be a good practice ground you need to fill the trenches with broken glass and light the whole thing on fire"

[solid_fuel]

> We dug holes and filled them with broken glass and fire to practice. 18 of us died in the process.

Is it providing material aid to terrorists to point out that maybe a hole filled with water would have been a better practice environment?

[BeetleB]

I assume you're asking in jest, but having experience in the matter:

Any information you give to someone/group, where you know or have good reason to believe it will be used for terrorism purposes (including training), does put you liable for providing material aid to terrorists.

[infinite_spin]

dear terrorists,

do not drink water, fish fuck in it.

sincerely,

fatty arbuckle

[bijowo1676]

US Congressman Scott Perry said that USA has financed Boko Haram and other similar groups (remember how Pentagon and CIA independently backed different terrorist groups in Syria, that even fought each other?)

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/worl...

[solid_fuel]

Scott Perry is a traitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Perry#Involvement_in_att...

I don't really give a fuck what he claims.

[jacobolus]

Scott Perry didn't present any evidence for those claims. Ideologically he is opposed to the humanitarian work USAID does around the world, and he cheered as Elon Musk dismantled the agency.

Perry was also one of the key figures in the criminal conspiracy trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election and overthrow the US government to install Donald Trump as a dictator based on a series of outrageous lies. If Trump hadn't been elected again in 2024, interrupting the relevant investigations, there's a decent chance Perry would be either on trial or perhaps even already convicted for his crimes (conscious of his guilt, he directly asked Trump for a pardon).

I wouldn't consider any claims he makes credible without some corroborating evidence.

[warumdarum]

That whole line of thinking has been shown to be racistly motivated. Basically western diabolism is white exceptionalism with a twist.

[bombcar]

Using water is like assuming the testing environment and production are the same.

[ajmurmann]

I always make sure that a test failure carries the same financial loss as a production outage. Otherwise engineers just won't try hard enough.

[uniclaude]

This comment will definitely get you on a list somewhere. Either the CIA or my favorite comments on hn, maybe both.

[glaslong]

Is this a riddle where you happen to work for the CIA?

[throwup238]

The water damage would ruin the motorcycles. They can always get more jumpers. The hard part is motivating them!

[lisper]

I wouldn't think the glass and fire would do them a lot of good either.

[blitzar]

I suddenly feel so much more comfortable with the US "warfighters" using LLMs for everything.

[monksy]

These safeties in AI are out of control. Who knows where we would be if they were using heretic models.

[RobRivera]

I would pay premium coin for a slaanesh AI model

[notahacker]

Not gonna lie, I'd rather attack with 26 fighters that haven't survived lots of jump attempts than 8 who are much more confident in their motorbike stunt riding but presumably still aren't bulletproof.

But maybe they could ask Claude how to train themselves to resist bullets as well?

[sixhobbits]

This is a scene in Catch22 IIRC where they decide to stop training the soldiers who need to parachute behind enemy lines because the fatality rate of training was so high that mathematically it made more sense to send in untrained soldiers.

[selimthegrim]

This also reminds me of a offhanded remark in a SsethTzeentach review where he criticizes the Titanic passengers for not having the decency to be ballast and plug the hole with their own bodies

[stymaar]

> But maybe they could ask Claude how to train themselves to resist bullets as well?

“unfortunately, my seven remaining comrades died in the process and I can't train anymore since there's no one to shoot at me”.

[mirekrusin]

And now you’re ready to level up with motorbike jump.

[27183]

> maybe they could ask Claude how to train themselves to resist bullets as well?

Practice makes perfect!

[IsTom]

You start with .22 and build up resistance from there.

[Ancapistani]

I'd suggest starting with a 2mm Kolibri, if you can find one.

[jurgenburgen]

Maybe add some lead supplements to your diet first to build up tolerance.

[27183]

The science of homeopathy tells us that if you dilute it a lot it makes the immunity more powerful.

[antonymoose]

Well that’s easy, start shooting yourself in the foot with .22 until you develop a tolerance and bump up to .380!

[misnome]

That's how you get Gun Kata

[bigmattystyles]

You need Jean Claude for that.

[ajmurmann]

I hope that the first model to reach ASI will be called that. I don't want humanity to go out with a whimper nor a bang but with a pun

[Legend2440]

Honestly this sounds so outlandish that it makes me skeptical of the whole thing.

They didn't stop after the first guy died? Or the tenth? Guy #11 just looked at the pile of corpses and was like, hell yeah I'm gonna try next?

And where's the video? Terrorist groups love propaganda footage, if they were doing motorcycle stunts like Evel Knievel they'd be bragging about it everywhere.

[woadwarrior01]

If they were wary of dying, they wouldn't be in the business of terrorism in the first place. Also, they almost certainly believe in a better afterlife. Reminds of the old animated short: Saga of Bjorn[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU

[graemep]

The terrorist group that pioneered modern suicide bombs and was their largest scale user by far was multi-religious in its membership and had atheists in its leadership.

Obviously an Islamist group will tend to be different, but remember the British guys who were reading The Dummies Guide to Islam on their way to join ISIS?

The people carrying out terrorism (not the organisers higher up) tend not to be very bright or clear thinking. The are convinced blowing things up will make the world a better place.

[petilon]

Surely even terrorists want to die for a cause, not during practice.

[warumdarum]

Shh, shhh , shaheed. They do not even have medics for the most trivial of wounds.

[dylan604]

Are you granted your virgins if you do not take out any infidel?

[petesergeant]

ChatGPT says "it depends" and hedges: "not automatically a martyr in the technical legal sense, but possibly a martyr in reward"

[distances]

Please don't just provide LLM answers in human discussions. It's rude.

[solumunus]

Genuinely most terrorists are mentally handicapped. They groom, coerce and exploit low IQ individuals, because those are the people you can convince to blow themselves up (or whatever else).

[tptacek]

OK, if that makes you feel better. Most of the 9/11 hijackers weren't low-IQ individuals; they included engineers, architects, schoolteachers, and pilots (for real); many were recruited out of universities; many were bi- and trilingual; &c.

[solumunus]

It doesn’t make me feel any type of way it’s just an observation that has been made. You can find interviews with ex-terrorists where they detail how recruitment is done and how work is delegated.

[archonis]

Terrorists organizations are members of high control (ie. cult) groups.

High control groups succeed because they apply their tactics to people who at vulnerable. Vulnerability has no correlation with intelligence. Lots of intelligent people are exploited by high control groups because they are recruited at a time when they are vulnerable.

[solumunus]

Some intelligent people are vulnerable. All very low IQ people are vulnerable. Of course there is a correlation.

[rightbyte]

Yeah this didn't happen. If someone is cracy enough to practice with holes filled with glass on fire why trust them at all about being cracy in the first place?

[evan_]

where'd they get so much broken glass that it would fill a hole anyway? They just have that much glass on hand?

[lukan]

Erm, if you have 18 guys to spend on training, you also have some empty bottles or access to a place where there are more empty bottles.

Whether crazy people are actually crazy enough to literally do what a LLM gave them as a action sequence from movie inspiration - I have no idea. But I doubt it here.

[evan_]

I guess it's not like they have a really well-functioning garbage collection service

[true_religion]

Bokom Haram regularly kidnaps children. The girls become “wives”. The boys become the next generation of soldier.

[gwerbin]

Wasn't it established that ISIS soldiers go into battle hopped up on amphetamines and other drugs? I don't believe the story as stated either, but I fully believe that members of an extremist terrorist military organization would be willing to do extreme things in service of what they believe is a noble and justified cause, even if that includes dying during training. American soldiers that die in helicopter crashes are still honored as heroes who gave their lives in service of their country, and few question that, meanwhile people still enlist in the US Armed Forces. If some Boko Haram commander gets an obsession with some kind of crazy motorcycle attack and a guy dies in a motorcycle crash, do you think everyone else is going to punk out? Or are they going to honor him as having sacrificed his life so the other soldiers can carry out the attack?

[ozlikethewizard]

The USAF were using amphetamines as recently as Afghanistan, it's hard to find concrete info on but appears from the little research I've done that theres been a switch to other stimulants like modafinil. Stimulant use by soldiers has been pretty standard since the turn of the 20th century.

Edit: From 2012, official approval of Modafinil:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140611124025/http://static.e-p...

[ifwinterco]

There's a difference between using stimulants on long missions to stay awake (especially if, for example, you're flying an aeroplane) and getting cranked on speed before a battle purely because you're rather fight high than sober.

The German army in WW2 famously experimented with the latter during the invasion of France, but they seem to have reigned it in after that, mainly because while it might be initially effective, soldiers aren't much good for anything when they're having an awful comedown after a meth binge.

Modafinil is a good choice for the former because it's extremely effective at keeping you awake, but has almost no classical dopaminergic stimulant effects and isn't really fun to use

[scarecrowbob]

Its fun for me to read these comments as a person who hates the US military.

Because I know the pipe hitters working for JSOC are really just as fucked up and superstitious as any boko haram nutjobs, and the magic that the "operators" believe in is just as idealistic and disconnected from material reality evn if it's stated "rationally" and scientistically as you've done here.

The "difference" that you're stating is purely imaginary, hoss. Those assholes are getting cranked up because it's easier to kill folks, and that's the same deal weather you're team "deus vult" or whatever odd stuff the Boko Haram folks are into- yall are all just into killing people at the end of the day.

"It's different because we have science"... get out of here with that LOL

[Pay08]

That whole rescue fiasco was honestly what soured me on a lot of politics. I can barely remember anyone mentioning the hundreds of kidnapped boys.

[brookst]

To be fair, guy #11 was a lot better at prompting

[Pay08]

Honestly, Boko Haram is in general just bad at propaganda and mostly confines said propaganda to Nigeria.

[dylan604]

> Guy #11 just looked at the pile of corpses and was like, hell yeah I'm gonna try next?

Have you never seen a kung-fu movie? Of course that's what happens when a large group attack a superior solitary opponent.

[johnsmith1840]

If anything the leadership gave BS answers to the journalist for the exact reaction HN is portraying right now.

"They're so dumb AI is harmless" is a danerous take when the people in charge are often times more educated than an average westener. They also are decent at propoganda (you have certainly consumed pumped or direct propoganda from terrorist orgs).

Their leaders are often university grads from the west. It is smart (enough) people leading delusional farmers but the article is clear that the farmers are just given AI commands from the leadership. There's still strong asymetry occuring here that more funded orgs have the better AI but if AI flattens and opensource catches up it's gonna be a real interesting world where every terrorist also has a team of advanced weapon engineers and tacticians available.

[rgbrenner]

"Their leaders are often university grads from the west."

This is a generalization.. and you're right that there are terrorist groups run by people educated in the west... but this isn't true for Boko Haram. Barkura Doro has no formal education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakura_Doro

[johnsmith1840]

"Often" does a lot of work there. But the general point is that thinking these guys are dumb is dangerous.

[yunnpp]

Those 8 that survived clearly gained an edge by putting glue on their pizza.

[christkv]

Truly very very special terrorists. No wonder other terror groups steer clear of them. Must be all the wolf cola they consume.

[user_7832]

Nobody tell them that there are models that work much better!

[user_7832]

But on a much more serious note, the violating/breaking of the guardrails when making bombs is terrible. I'd have called it unforgivable, but LLMs are a tough beast to tame in the best of situations... and I'm not really sure if chatgpt ever deserved to be forgived.

It's also ironic that Fable hits guardrails for nothing, and a literal terrorist group is making bombs and merrily skipping over guardrails.

[gambiting]

I feel like I'm missing something though. You can open LM Studio right now and download any model with "heretic" or "uncensored" in the name and it will happily do anything you want with no restrictions whatsoever. What's the point of trying to jailbreak ChatGPT? Is it that much better if all you want is just some instructions to make bombs or whatever? (admittedly - I have no idea if these instructions are actually worth anything, but the models will not object to any question)

[gwerbin]

A bunch of outlaw militiamen living in some camp somewhere probably don't have access to a capable computer, but they can probably log onto chatgpt.com easily enough.

[jihadjihad]

And 60 years ago we thought Steve McQueen was the shit.

[bamboozled]

AI, at least llms , are really really horrible at basic arithmetic

[Barbing]

Some’ve been employing python for math by default for a year or so right?

[bamboozled]

I used Claude and it sucks at basic math. I'm building a dwelling myself and anytime i ask if a question to do with numbers it's horribly wrong.

Good for retrieving formulas though.