Director Hideo Kojima has a pretty impressive record when it comes to prophecy. In "Metal Gear Solid 2," he foresaw the evils of the information economy, and in "Death Stranding," he took advantage of modern social isolation just before a pandemic struck and changed everything. But he never thought the day would come when soldiers would be able to outwit military AI by creeping under cardboard boxes.

The humble cardboard box is an ever-present item in the "Metal Gear" series, with a variety of functions depending on the work. At its most basic, Snake or someone else would place the box upside down on top of himself and waddle around with it over his head. As long as it is not placed in the soldier's path or moved while the soldier is looking, this is a remarkably effective disguise, and it turns out that Snake is not the only soldier who has thought of this.

Shashank Joshi, defense editor of The Economist, recently published an excerpt from a new book on AI in the military, Four Battlegrounds, by Paul Scharre (discovered by Kotaku (opens in new tab)). In it, he tells the story of how the military used Marines to improve its AI detection system. Initially, the Marines just hung around while the machine collected data to improve the AI: then the script was flipped.

"The AI machine (which I am trying very hard not to call a bipedal nuclear-equipped tank) was placed in the middle of a traffic circle, and all eight Marines were given the same assignment: to improve the machine's AI.

"Eight Marines: not one was spotted," Phil said. They beat the AI system not with conventional camouflage, but with clever tricks outside the AI system's testing regime. They did a 300-meter somersault, and they hid under a cardboard box. I could hear them laughing the whole time. Like Bugs Bunny in a Looney Tunes cartoon, they crept up on Elmer Fudd inside the cardboard box. 'My favorite guy, he stripped down and walked like a fir tree. You could see him smile; the AI system was trained to detect a walking man, not a man doing somersaults, hiding in a cardboard box, or disguised as a tree."

"Like Bugs Bunny, like the best soldier of the 21st century" Interestingly, this is one of Kojima's regularly recurring themes around the cardboard box: typically, a character complaining about having something useless and a character pointing out that its usefulness is only limited by his imagination. The other is a character who points out that its usefulness is determined by one's imagination. Another nice coincidence: in MGS Peace Walker, the "love box" was a cardboard box large enough for two soldiers at once. And then there's the walking nuclear mech and ...... In fact, let's leave it in the game.