Kojima was not crazy: the most legendary camouflage of Metal Gear Solid has served for the army to deceive an AI

Your mother told you to stop playing Metal Gear Solid and you thought that Hideo Kojima he was a genius for combat with Psycho Mantis. However, we all agreed that it was impossible to hide under a cardboard box in a blockhouse like Shadow Moses.

Big mistake, because the legendary technique of Solid Snake and Big Boss has served in real life. If we look at the book Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Four battlefields: power in the age of artificial intelligence), written by Paul Scharre, we will see different passages about how AI can alter the balance of power among the superpowers.

Shashank Joshi, journalist for The Economist, has shared some fragments of the work, but there is one especially that draws attention. In it, Scharre recounts that a group from DARPA—yes, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that appeared in the games—was accompanied by a team of Marines for a week. The objective was to enhance the capacities of an AI specially designed to capture humans.

However, the tables turned on the last day. The DARPA members placed the AI ​​system at a point and asked the marines to enter the device’s action circle, starting the passage at a great distance, and manage to touch it. All this without being detected by the AI, of course. The surprise came when they saw that the marines used all kinds of simple but effective techniques to deceive her.

“Two cartwheeled for 300 meters,” explains Scharre. Another completely bare a tree to camouflage with it as if it were Fortnite, but the most unexpected was the one used by two soldiers. They took two cardboard boxes, placed them on top of them and managed to move forward. no problem until the AI. And it is that the program was configured in such a way that it only detects humans walking, not doing somersaults or cardboard boxes that seem to move alone. Of course, what ingenuity they have had, although we do not know if they have played Metal Gear Solid.