Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!purdue!iuvax!smythe
From: smythe@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: does AI kill?
Message-ID: <12400014@iuvax>
Date: 15 Jul 88 19:35:00 GMT
References: <1376@daisy.UUCP>
Organization: Indiana University CSCI, Bloomington
Lines: 49
Nf-ID: #R:daisy.UUCP:1376:iuvax:12400014:000:2624
Nf-From: iuvax.cs.indiana.edu!smythe    Jul 15 14:35:00 1988


/* Written 10:58 am  Jul 15, 1988 by kurt@fluke in iuvax:comp.ai */

-  [star wars stuff deleted]

-I will believe in Star Wars only once they can demonstrate that AEGIS works
-under realistic battlefield conditions.  The history of these systems is
-really bad.  Remember the Sheffield, smoked in the Falklands War because
-their Defense computer identified an incoming Exocet missile as friendly
-because France is a NATO ally?  What was the name of our other AEGIS cruiser
-that took a missile in the gulf, because they didn't have their guns turned on
-because their own copter pilots didn't like the way the guns tracked them in
-and out.
-/* End of text from iuvax:comp.ai */

Lets try and get the facts straight.  In the Falklands conflict the
British lost two destroyers.  One because they never saw the missle
coming until it was too late.  It is very hard to shoot down an
Exocet.  In the other case, the problem was that the air defense
system was using two separate ships, one to do fire control
calculations and the other to actually fire the missle.  The ship that
was lost had the fire control computer.  It would not send the command
to shoot down the missle because there was another British ship in the
way.  The ship in the way was actually the one that was to fire the
surface-to-air missle.  Screwy.  I don't know which event involved the
Sheffield, but there was no misidentification in either case.

The USS Stark, the ship hit by the Iraqi-fired exocet, is not an AEGIS
cruiser at all but a missile frigate, a smaller ship without the
sophisticated weapons systems found on the cruiser.  The captain did
not activate the close-support system because he did not think the
Iraqi jet was a threat.  Because of this some of his men died.  This
incident is now used as a training exercise for ship commanders and
crew.  In both the Stark's case and the Vincennes' case the captains
made mistakes and people died.  In both cases the captains (or
officers in charge, in the case of the Stark) had deactivated the
automatic systems.  On the Stark, it may have saved lives.  On the
Vincennes, the tragedy would have occurred sooner.

I don't really think that AI technology is ready for either of these
systems.  Both decisions involved weighing the risks of losing human
lives against conflicting and incorrect information, something that AI
systems do not yet do well.  It is clear that even humans will make
mistakes in these cases, and will likely continue to do so until the
quality and reliability of their information improves.

Erich Smythe
Indiana University
smythe@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
iuvax!smythe