M Thomas Apple Author Page

Science fiction, actual science, history, and personal ranting about life, the universe, and everything

AI and the future of warfare (as predicted)

September 23, 2023
MThomas

Both Russian and Ukrainian forces are integrating traditional weapons with AI, satellite imaging and communications, as well as smart and loitering munitions, according to a May report from the Special Competitive Studies Project, a non-partisan U.S. panel of experts. The battlefield is now a patchwork of deep trenches and bunkers where troops have been “forced to go underground or huddle in cellars to survive,” the report said.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/human-machine-teams-driven-by-ai-are-about-reshape-warfare-2023-09-08/

I found it interesting that many people online were commenting about Iain M Bank’s take on AI (for an in-depth analysis of his Culture series check this out on Blood Knife) and how he “predicted” all this.

Uh. You know, I’m not sure whether Banks wrote much about integrating traditional weapons with AI (since I haven’t read his series). But I do know that PK Dick wrote a short story called “Second Variety” about trench warfare and AI robots making more versions of themselves and taking over the world.

He wrote it in 1953.

(You can read it at Project Gutenberg.)

That is waaay before the Culture series.

Sigh. Read the classics, guys.

Attack of the Killer Drones — Non-fiction not fiction?

July 26, 2022
MThomas

These aren’t the drones that deliver your online order. Loaded with cameras, sensors, and explosives, their mission is to drive themselves to a target with an algorithm in the driver’s seat. They destroy themselves along with the target, leaving behind just a pile of electronic detritus.

https://m.dw.com/en/killer-robots-will-they-be-banned/a-62587436

Oh, joy. I can’t wait to see what happens when we program 3D printers to churn them out.

Or just simply make them self-replicating. What could possibly go wrong?

US phones come with preinstalled Chinese malware

January 9, 2020
MThomas

One of the pre-installed apps, which looks and operates as a wireless update program, automatically installs more apps without user consent, according to Malwarebytes.

And it appears to be a variant of Adups, malware previously traced to China, which transmits text, call-location and app data to a Chinese server every 72 hours.

China is so far ahead of the US in terms of hacking and spyware. And this is only the stuff that they didn’t even bother hiding…

Btw the image used is a repeat from a 2018 article about Lebanon-based spyware installed on phones in five different countries.

Missile strikes are distractions. The next war will be online.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51054901

The Dearly Departed

June 10, 2019
MThomas

IMG_5939

On this day, June 10th, what would have been my mother’s 69th birthday had she not passed away suddenly last October, I am conflicted.

Do I have the right to write about family history yet again?

And yet without the past, it’s difficult to write about the future. They are connected, by both visible and invisible lines, threads of beliefs and behaviors, attitudes and antagonisms, odd coincidences and strangely fortunate happenings. Particularly in my family. Continue Reading

Notes from the Nineties: Upstate is…where, exactly?

March 25, 2016
MThomas


This is the fifth and final preview of my upcoming collection of short stories and poems, Notes from the Nineties. In the first part, I explained the background behind the first story and poem pair, Cois Fharriage and Ag an gCrosaire. In the second part, I took a look at some of my experiences in Japan that informed Asian Dreams and Training the Mountain Warrior. In the third part, I delved into the “true story” of The Lost Bunny Shrine of Annandale. The fourth and penultimate part, I talked 
about my brief experience with occultism and the wisdom of teeth that led to The Four Teeth of the Apocrypha.

DSC00484I’m from New York. No, not New York City. No, not Niagara Falls (the Canadian horseshoe looks better, anyhow). Yes, there is something in between. An awful lot of something, actually. In fact, the oldest and still largest state park in the US comprises most of Upstate New York.

Yes, I’m from the Adirondacks. But it’s more complicated. Continue Reading

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