In the Iran war, it looks like AI helped with operations, not strategy
A hot take on how AI may have played out in the war so far
Overheard, from a career diplomat whose country is not one of the key participants in the US-Iran conflict, paraphrased (probably imperfectly) from memory:
This has been a war filled with mistakes. The US underestimated Iran’s resilience, overestimated the chances of regime change, and failed to anticipate Iran’s countermoves.
Yet presumably the US made use of AI in its strategy. It looks like AI helped with operations, but was not good on strategy.
Why should this be? I see at least three reasons off the top of my head, all of which should have been obvious before the bombs were dropped.
First, strategy, more than e.g., writing requisition memos, requires a broad, deep understanding of the world, but generative AI has never had robust models of the world.
Second, strategy (especially in a situation like this) demands an ability to project beyond past data, and into new situations. Generative AI has never been very good at that.
Third, there is the well-known tendency of generative AI to be sycophantic; to tell users that their ideas were the greatest ever, even when they are not. It’s not altogether difficult to imagine certain members of the senior leadership at the Department of War succumbing to that.
AI is fine for writing memos; nobody should rely on it to plan a war or to guess its likely outcomes.
Right before the start of the Iran war, I asked DeepSeek what the odds were, in the event the Trump administration decided to go to war with Iran, that the Trump administration would succeed in replacing the then current Iranian regime with one the Trump administration would find tolerable. DeepSeek said the odds were basically zero. Maybe the Trump administration wasn't using AI enough.
Do you think palantir was involved in the targeting AI? Because the data on the girls school was 10 years out of date. Apparently it used to be some kind of naval administration office. AI in general can't seem to grasp the distinctions imbedded in recency and superiority. Humans are constantly weighing these iterative contexts. And you know --government, education and companies have no immunity to these highly-funded, sophisticated and overpromising sales pitches by huge salesforces, advertising and PR hype. Wish someone would send you a pitch deck!