Guest
Katrina Manson
Reporter, Bloomberg
Investigated the US military's AI use and chronicled the Pentagon's Project Maven program in her book.
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Real Alpha has cut 7 moments of Katrina Manson (Reporter, Bloomberg) talking, from an interview on Future of Life Institute Podcast published Sep 25, 2026.
What Katrina Manson said
Can Humans Still Control AI-Assisted Kill Chains? (with Katrina Manson)
7 moments · 24 min
- 8:42
AI sharply increased the number of targets the military could strike
“With the help of large language models as well, because that sped up processes.”
at 10:42 - 17:43
Computer vision struggled when Ukraine's battlefield changed
“It had been trained on the desert. It had been trained on the jungle in the Philippines.”
at 18:14 - 23:30
Targeting doctrine is shifting from human decisions to oversight
“AI will initiate actions under human oversight rather than with the human making the decision.”
at 24:28 - 35:53
Accurately labeled data matters more than the model
“it is more valuable than the algorithm or the model. It is having access to well-labeled data”
at 36:40 - 27:00
Maven was updated 50 times during Ukraine's first months
“over the course of the first few months of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, Maven's smart system was updated 50 times.”
at 27:54 - 29:53
AI companies lack visibility into classified military use
“the companies themselves don't know how their AI is being used in classified operations.”
at 31:37 - 15:45
AI made human judgment the longest step in a targeting cycle
“And it changed so that the longest part of the cycle ended up being the human judgment, just because everything else got so much quicker.”
at 16:32
- 8:42
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