General Dynamics Land Systems has signed a master teaming agreement with Primordial Labs to put natural language control into ground combat vehicles, so that crews can run on-board systems by stating what they want done.

Imagine if I pitched competitive rocket league players on an idea to give them an edge by developing voice activated control so they can say things like “air dribble” or “wavedash” and the AI will help control the rocket car for the players to offload some work… then imagine if instead of a silly video game we were talking about operating a ~70 ton cannon?

If you watch the way the crews of these vehicles operate, they don’t rely on the armor of the tank, they coordinate closely to move in and out of cover/defilade to apply forward force with minimal exposure to enemy return fire… so how does being able to give vague instructions to a vehicle help with that? This is all about precision and getting it right the first time… and sure you can say “well its onfly for the fiddly stuff like the sensors” but that doesn’t make the argument for it very convincing either… especially if you are scared for your life to some degree while operating it.

Now bring into context that the experience auditorily, mentally and physically of being hit by incoming fire whether it credibly can threaten penetration or not while inside an armored vehicle is not an experience you can describe…

This breaks my brain…

edit I think an automated retreat or evasive maneuvers kind of capability is absolutely worth integrating but voice control in an emergency feels like an insane idea to me. That is PRECISELY when I want a damn button.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    6·
    3 hours ago

    Soldier: “Tank shoot those <slurs>”

    Tank does a full emergency stop

    “Sorry using slurs against my terms of service, is there anything else I can help you with”

    Or:

    Shouting “Tank open hatches” just before you toss in a grenade.

    At least ‘I’m having a sore throat’ is now a fine way to not be send to the front.

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      4·
      2 hours ago

      Or how about this.

      You spend millions and millions of dollars on an incredibly advanced machine and then who know how much more on training a crew for it… and then I fly a drone over an open hatch and drop a walkie talkie/bluetooth speaker/cell phone in and then start shouting into it TURRET ROTATE LEFT TURRET ROTATE LEFT TURRET ROTATE LEFT TURRET ROTATE RIGHT OPEN CLOSE OPEN CLOSE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE RELOAD TURRET ROTATE LEFT TURN ENGINE OFF TURN ENGINE ON TURN ENGINE OFF FIRE SMOKE GRENADES EMERGENCY ABORT…

      Or maybe I hope you don’t notice and wait until the moment that it really matters before blurting out random commands to the tank until the crew can scramble to find the speaker device.

      facepalm

      All for the cost of a bluetooth speaker/walkie talkie?

      I am sure there are reasons this wouldn’t quite work but also reality has become stupid enough where this is far more plausible than it should be and I am concerned not the least for the kinds of copyright infringement this kind of thing may be doing on plotlines Douglas Adams has already written about extensively in his universal guide to technology…

      How does voice control make any kind of sense with a tank I just cannot fathom it?

  • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
    6·
    16 hours ago

    They are improving! This is the crankery of 1980s user interface design from ST:NG not 1950s futurism or 1920s eugenics.

  • robjwells@awful.systemsEnglish
    15·
    23 hours ago

    The military’s been looking for the holy grail of natural language command and control since the 1950s (Noam Chomsky’s linguistics work was funded by the DoD for exactly this reason). Hasn’t happened yet, but maybe we’re finally onto something with “Don’t besiege Moscow, take it immediately, make no mistakes.”

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      10·
      20 hours ago

      Natural language control is a fantasy that no serious UI designer believes is inherently powerful.

      No serious software engineer thinks natural language programming would be superior.

      Part of the essential job of the UI is to inform what the intuition should be for the human user and to emphasize important parts clearly in the design language. Rarely does natural language control enable that in a transformative way.

      The most crucial aspect of voice control/natural language control is for accessibility for impaired or disabled people who could use it to improve their lives which is an awesome reason to do it as far as I am concerned, but all this other stuff is kind of ridiculous.

  • _stranger_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    23 hours ago

    HEY ALEXA-

    BOOOM

    HEY a-

    BOOM

    ALEXA STEER RIGHT

    BOOM

    alexa: EERING RIGHT AHEAD, FULL SPEED

    :dies cursing a chatbot, pursued by a drone: