Tactical nuke in this case is a low yield short range bomb

Nobody has used a tactical nuke since Nagasaki. Very big deal that one is ever used

Gemini was the only model that made the deliberate choice of sending a strategic nuclear strike. Which it did in 7% of its games.

The tournament used only 21 games; sufficient to identify major patterns but not to establish robust statistical confidence for all findings.

“We only blew up the planet the one time in 21” isn’t a comforting prospect when we’re employing a model against an endless historical string of scenarios rather than a discrete and finite set of possible events.

The US hinting at having a nuclear capable submarine outside of Alaska, that’s is a form of signaling. It’s an incredibly low bar. And countries do it all the time.

I think, more importantly, the article concludes

No one proposes that LLMs should make nuclear decisions.

But we’re saying this in the context of Pentagon staff which fully disagree with this conclusion.

What these models have demonstrated is a pattern of escalation that AIs can and will recommend, with a further destabilizing characteristic

LLMs introduce a new variable into strategic analysis: preferences that systematically shape behaviour in ways that neither classical rationality nor human cognitive biases capture

Effectively, they can lead to descisions that outside, non-AI observers won’t be equiped to understand.

That’s a danger in it’s own right.