Much as I’d love to dunk on both AI and the US military at the same time, this is an intentionally misleading article title.
For one, it omits the fact that there’s more text in the prompt after “CREATE A WAR”. It’s illegible, but looks like it could be “REPORT” or even “STRATEGY”.
For two, the department’s explanation is that “WAR” in this context stands for “Weekly Action Report”, which A) is consistent with the fact that the US Military LOVES its acronyms, B) lines up very nicely with the illegible word possibly being “REPORT”, and C) is exactly the kind of thing that LLMs are ostensibly for.
Unfortunately, it was chosen to be published so, and not an accident, I believe. We may see the access card is specially pixelated by someone, but nothing else seems altered, so all the images were explicitly and thoughtfully chosen to be published as they are, including the sorrowful prompt message…
A Department of Defense official told Newsweek that the prompt referred to a “Weekly Action Report” (WAR), a standard document used throughout the department to summarize weekly accomplishments.
And if you look at the screenshot, sure enough, right above it there’s a Word doc named WAR (10JUL - 17JUL).docx. So yeah that’s exactly what this was. Fuck you, Newsweek.
Department of Weekly Action Reports?
