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The Duffel Brief · the free edition, Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Vol. 15 · No. 119 · Monday, 5 October 2026

Navy & Marines

Lincoln sailor returning from deployment already broke

Financial counselors unable to determine where approximately 10 months of pay went

Paste-eating Marine praised for unmatched commitment to unit

Backed-up toilet appointed new Secretary of the Army

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Vol. 15 · No. 119

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Vol. 15 · No. 119 · Deployed worldwide

Monday

5 October 2026

0035 Zulu

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· Page 2

AI will be smarter than humans in 10 years, smarter than Marines in 5: Study

The singularity is coming

Filed · 0452

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A new study from the Rand Corporation has predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will become smarter than the average human in general measures of intelligence in as little as 10 years and smarter than the average United States Marine in 5.

“Our findings indicate that AI already became smarter than machine gunners and second lieutenants sometime in 2019,” lead researcher Dr. Linda Bradley said. “Although they’re outliers, so we had to exclude them from the data. One cannot really consider a lieutenant to be ‘intelligent’ in the classical sense of the word.”

The study found that, although AI will overtake Marines in intelligence in 5 years, it will still not be smart enough to be considered an “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI. It will still be a “narrow AI” that can only accomplish specific tasks.

“At the five-year mark, AI will only be able to understand specific rote tasks programmed into it by engineers or its platoon sergeant,” Bradley said. “Just like a Marine, it won’t have the broad cognitive abilities we typically associate with human intelligence.”

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