15 ms·

How is this different from nuclear weapons?

by k__ 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago
If a general lives in the penthouse at the top of a skyscraper, and maybe has a few thousand people who support him, nukes are not going to help deal with revolutionaries on the bottom floor. They are too indiscriminate and can't be used against close up targets. Whereas a general with a drone swarm and a few thousand supporters might be able to suppress a city. Fortunately a little far fetched, but what was impossible with nukes is only impractical with drones.
- throw1234651234 5y ago
  This is well put. There is also the idea that as armies got MI-24s/AH-64s, etc, opposing forces got Stingers/Iglas. Perhaps it will play out in a way where once armies get drones, OpFor gets counters - jamming / hacking / EM / whatever.
MisterTea 5y ago
The land to be ruled by said rogue general will not be a radioactive wasteland.
raclage 5y ago
Sufficiently advanced robots would leave a lot more of value behind than a nuke which makes deploying them much less costly to the person that wants to actually control the territory.
behindai 5y ago
Seeing AI weapons as a weapon of mass destruction is a trending discourse.
wcarss 5y ago
It's a much harder weapon to control via regulation and treaties than nuclear weapons: there is no nuclear material required to hook guns up to computers en masse in factories, let alone improvisationally. Once this cat is really out of the bag, everyone who wants it will have it.
- est31 5y ago
  Manufacturing chips is an extremely complicated process and requires thousands of specialists from multiple different disciplines to cooperate. Building a new fab costs billions and the buildings are extremely sensitive for damage. I think one of the reasons why the west wants to block mainland China from manufacturing chips is to prevent them from building a robot army.
  - wcarss 5y ago
    It's true that building the chips is hard, but making it hard to buy general purpose small computers, or digital camera sensors suitable for vision, or rotor blades, or batteries, or antennas, is also going to be very difficult. Proliferation has already happened. Maybe cheap LIDAR will be something we can keep a lid on? But regular vision is still likely pretty good for lining up a shot or finding a face.
    - cabalamat 5y ago
      > but making it hard to buy general purpose small computers [...] is also going to be very difficult Just ban general purpose computers that allow running arbitrary unsigned code. I'm sure lots of governments and corporations would be happy to get on board that one, and many end-users wouldn't notice.
      - kian 5y ago
        A cure worse than the disease. Also wouldn't stop the military from building up a drone army and then someone within it choosing to go rogue and take it with them. It only ensures that no one else can stop them.
        wcarss 5y ago
        I think the parent post agreed with you and was just being facetious -- 'just ban general purpose computing' isn't very likely to be a popular sentiment on hn!
crznp 5y ago
The world made it through the cold war without major disaster, but it is easy to imagine history taking a different path, so I don't think that this is a comforting comparison. Also, nuclear weapons can't be used 'a little bit' but killer robots can be -- it is much less clear where we draw the line. It seems likely that their use will be normalized/entrenched before we figure that out. Though I hope that you're right.

How is this different from nuclear weapons?

by k__ 5y ago

How is this different from nuclear weapons?

If a general lives in the penthouse at the top of a skyscraper, and maybe has a few thousand people who support him, nukes are not going to help deal with revolutionaries on the bottom floor. They are too indiscriminate and can't be used against close up targets. Whereas a general with a drone swarm and a few thousand supporters might be able to suppress a city. Fortunately a little far fetched, but what was impossible with nukes is only impractical with drones.

throw1234651234 5y ago
This is well put. There is also the idea that as armies got MI-24s/AH-64s, etc, opposing forces got Stingers/Iglas. Perhaps it will play out in a way where once armies get drones, OpFor gets counters - jamming / hacking / EM / whatever.

MisterTea 5y ago

The land to be ruled by said rogue general will not be a radioactive wasteland.

raclage 5y ago

Sufficiently advanced robots would leave a lot more of value behind than a nuke which makes deploying them much less costly to the person that wants to actually control the territory.

behindai 5y ago

Seeing AI weapons as a weapon of mass destruction is a trending discourse.

wcarss 5y ago

It's a much harder weapon to control via regulation and treaties than nuclear weapons: there is no nuclear material required to hook guns up to computers en masse in factories, let alone improvisationally. Once this cat is really out of the bag, everyone who wants it will have it.

est31 5y ago
Manufacturing chips is an extremely complicated process and requires thousands of specialists from multiple different disciplines to cooperate. Building a new fab costs billions and the buildings are extremely sensitive for damage. I think one of the reasons why the west wants to block mainland China from manufacturing chips is to prevent them from building a robot army.
- wcarss 5y ago
  It's true that building the chips is hard, but making it hard to buy general purpose small computers, or digital camera sensors suitable for vision, or rotor blades, or batteries, or antennas, is also going to be very difficult. Proliferation has already happened. Maybe cheap LIDAR will be something we can keep a lid on? But regular vision is still likely pretty good for lining up a shot or finding a face.
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    > but making it hard to buy general purpose small computers [...] is also going to be very difficult Just ban general purpose computers that allow running arbitrary unsigned code. I'm sure lots of governments and corporations would be happy to get on board that one, and many end-users wouldn't notice.
    - kian 5y ago
      A cure worse than the disease. Also wouldn't stop the military from building up a drone army and then someone within it choosing to go rogue and take it with them. It only ensures that no one else can stop them.
      - wcarss 5y ago
        I think the parent post agreed with you and was just being facetious -- 'just ban general purpose computing' isn't very likely to be a popular sentiment on hn!

crznp 5y ago

The world made it through the cold war without major disaster, but it is easy to imagine history taking a different path, so I don't think that this is a comforting comparison. Also, nuclear weapons can't be used 'a little bit' but killer robots can be -- it is much less clear where we draw the line. It seems likely that their use will be normalized/entrenched before we figure that out. Though I hope that you're right.