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We already have autonomous militaries. We have for a long time. Nuclear Weapons don't have pilots, after all. I'm in favour autonomous militaries amongst non-pa

We already have autonomous militaries. We have for a long time. Nuclear Weapons don't have pilots, after all. I'm in favour autonomous militaries amongst non-pariah states. At least insomuch as I'm in favour of militaries in general: Temporary, necessary evils. What is different is the plummeting costs of killbots. We should do everything in our power to stop these from proliferating to lesser states or terrorist groups. Just as we do with nuclear weapons. But at the end of the day autonomous devices are going to kill people and terrorists are going to do some of the killing. We need to accept that fact and design around it, not plead that the reality be different.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
What crazier is I could (but WONT) whip up a pretty effective geneva convention style device. A blinder. It's one of the most horrific styles of weaponry - you don't even have the decency to kill them. All you do is monitor motion via a webcam. Once you see motion, you turn on an array of high power IR lasers with lenses to make an arc of laser light. There's no blink response, and the damage is already done. It would cost what, $500 total for the platform, including batteries for lengthy operation off grid. To be honest, I'd rather build stuff that bolsters all of humanity, and not just 1 tribe other another. I wish we'd get out of that "us vs them" mindset. Maybe someday.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  Yeah, I've quietly / privately worried about this as well. One watt lasers are easy to get. Though I think you're looking at way more than $500 for anything reliable. Thankfully there are international agreements against using these weapons on the battlefield.
mtgx 9y ago
There are two main functions of let's call them "modern" autonomous weapons, if you're going to expand the definition of autonomous weapons that much: 1) the decision to kill is not made by a human 2) the cost plummets so much that in the leaders' minds it starts to make sense to send one after almost everyone they want gone for whatever reason (just like it's already happening with drone strikes. It used to be that air strikes were mainly used in active war/conflict. Now it's more of a pervasive "they are always there" situation).

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

What crazier is I could (but WONT) whip up a pretty effective geneva convention style device. A blinder. It's one of the most horrific styles of weaponry - you don't even have the decency to kill them. All you do is monitor motion via a webcam. Once you see motion, you turn on an array of high power IR lasers with lenses to make an arc of laser light. There's no blink response, and the damage is already done. It would cost what, $500 total for the platform, including batteries for lengthy operation off grid. To be honest, I'd rather build stuff that bolsters all of humanity, and not just 1 tribe other another. I wish we'd get out of that "us vs them" mindset. Maybe someday.

3pt14159 9y ago
Yeah, I've quietly / privately worried about this as well. One watt lasers are easy to get. Though I think you're looking at way more than $500 for anything reliable. Thankfully there are international agreements against using these weapons on the battlefield.

mtgx 9y ago

There are two main functions of let's call them "modern" autonomous weapons, if you're going to expand the definition of autonomous weapons that much: 1) the decision to kill is not made by a human 2) the cost plummets so much that in the leaders' minds it starts to make sense to send one after almost everyone they want gone for whatever reason (just like it's already happening with drone strikes. It used to be that air strikes were mainly used in active war/conflict. Now it's more of a pervasive "they are always there" situation).