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Why The Pentagon’s ‘killer robots’ are spurring major concerns
- kranke155 3y agoI struggle to imagine a future where something like this is avoidable.
- blacksmith_tb 3y agoIt's true, though we do have international arms conventions that have been partly successful in preventing widespread use of say, chemical and biological weapons (but not completely, e.g. Syria). And nuclear proliferation has maybe been slowed, a little. Hard to tell if those are 'guarded successes' or 'the best we could hope for' or 'just kidding ourselves' - so like the same for slaughterbots.
- craighay1 3y agoThe difference between those past successes and this is that with none of the previous doomsday weapons has it been possible to cobble something together from COTS parts and open software. Nor have they had a large degree of crossover with your common garage tinkerer hobbies like drones and robotics. Nuclear material and chemicals are likely easier to put controls around or get names put on a list if/when acquiring them. Applying controls to software and embedded hardware is a bit more difficult. Then you have things like precision GPS systems that might just be too useful for civilian uses to not allow free access to. It feels like pandoras box might already have been opened on this one without some backpedalling in certain areas.
- esotericimpl 3y ago[dead]
- burcs 3y agoWar and technology, name a better duo? What is going to get really weird is how available a lot of this stuff is going to become. We will have to depend on the morality of the masses and hope that most wont build their own killer drones in their garages.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Vecr 3y agoPeople already have. Purchase a drone and a "wedding ring dropper" online and you can too!
- readyplayernull 3y agoQuick, start working on CRISPR bioweapons that ensnare and dissolve those robots!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Justsignedup 3y agoThere's zero chance this won't happen. We see that $1000 drones with explosives can be incredibly effective at both surveillance and taking out squads. The fact that these $1000 drones are doing the work often reserved for missiles or artillery with a much higher price tag says just how efficient they are. Its like the kamakazi pilots, except there's a human driving it, without a human inside. Ukraine has shown what the future of warfare is. Now everyone is trying to be more efficient at it.
- pmoriarty 3y agoNot only will it happen, but human interference in the process will be lessened over time, as human reaction time will be no match for that of machines. It's a race to give ever more autonomy and power to machines, because humans are too slow, too stupid, and too limited. There are a million dystopian scifi novels about this, and it seems they're about to start coming true.
- Justsignedup 3y agothe problem with machines is that they don't have to be the best. If it takes 100 shitty drones to take down a F35, sure an F35 is amazing tech with an amazing human, but those drones can be replaced in a couple of days, the F35 + pilot takes 100x the cost and years of training and building. That's the point. We don't need amazing robot warriors, that's the dystopian scifi, the hero human who is that much better. Yeah that's gonna be the case, but the point is it doesn't matter. I can mass manufacture my losses faster than you can breed and train human replacements. The biggest win with AI is that no matter how shitty it is, you can teach another one the same knowledge as the previous one instantly.
- cpgxiii 3y agoI would say the biggest problem with trying to regulate or prohibit "killer robots" is that almost no one involved can precisely define what a "killer robot" actually is. Aside from the terminators and assassin droids of scifi, there is a huge spectrum of "intelligence" in weapons systems, much of which has been deployed for years. Consider the following cases, and whether or not they are a "killer robot": 1. An automated shipboard air defence system, such as that provided by the Phalanx or SeaRAM, which can automatically detect and engage targets it determines pose a threat to the vesset (potentially faster than its human operators could respond). 2. An anti-ship missile, such as NSM, fitted with imaging infrared guidance so that it can autonomously identify hostile ships and prioritize which (and where) to strike. 3. An anti-radiation missile, such as HARM, which can be launched without a specific target and instead automatically identifies threat emitters to engage. All of these have some aspect of "killer robot" behavior, and they are all currently in service (several for decades). These existing weapons systems are too critical for anyone to remotely consider regulation or prohibition that would reduce their effectiveness, so any realistic hypothetical "killer robot" definition needs to coexist with them.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_Self-Defense_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_Self-Defense_System I agree with your premise. A lot of our weapons already are killer robots, they just don't walk on two or four legs.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThe navy put the trigger finger into full computer hands all the way back in the fifties with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Tactical_Data_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Tactical_Data_System , which could automatically assign and direct ordinance towards incoming threats, and could even give orders to piloted aircraft without human intervention, though this functionality was not always in effect.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hackermatic 3y agoA couple quick ideas for political activism against autonomous weapons: The "Stop Killer Robots" campaign: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/ https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/ Asking your nation to support the upcoming UN General Assembly resolution against autonomous weapons: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/news/unga-resolution-on-autonomous-weapons-systems-gives-states-historic-opportunity-to-voteagainstthemachine/ https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/news/unga-resolution-on-aut... And having personal conversations with your friends in technology and defense industries who may contribute to these technologies.
- nradov 3y agoBad idea. We should be encouraging development of autonomous weapons in order to reduce risks to US and allied military personnel in future conflicts.
- jfim 3y agoThe problem with that approach is that it also makes conflicts more likely if there are no drawbacks to deployment of such weapons. There's a lot of push back to deploying human soldiers in a conflict, but much less so for remotely controlled drones. It's likely that AI bots would have even less domestic pressure to avoid conflicts.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoSo we should be endangering young American's lives in a twisted blood sacrifice to the maintenance of peace? Ridiculous. If the Cold War taught us anything, it's that peace is bought with the power to annihilate anyone who chooses to break it. And to extend the Cold War analogy, sovereignty is only real to the countries with the military prowess to uphold it. A peaceful world is one where war is too risky for the decision makers, not the soldiers.
- jfim 3y ago> A peaceful world is one where war is too risky for the decision makers, not the soldiers. My point is that drones and autonomous weapons make it less risky for decision makers to engage in war, hence making it less peaceful.
- noonething 3y agoCan't we just all form one world government so we don't have to do this? Like ordering a new world or something.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ilaksh 3y agoI don't know if you are serious but I suspect without a peaceful geopolitical resolution we may see WWIII arrive within a few years. And it will be dominated by superintelligent weapons control systems directing swarms of autonomous weapons. And there is pressure to make them more and more autonomous because humans in the loop are too slow. It doesn't seem like a safe direction. I know that governments can be generally terrible and a world government is a lot of people's worst nightmare. But the alternative might be SkyNet. Or WWIII and then SkyNet.
- kvonhorn 3y agoThis seems like the sort of thing Philip K. Dick should have warned us about.
- everforward 3y agoI think an underappreciated danger of "killer robots" is that they allow converting capital directly into precise violent force without the need for some significant portion of the population tacitly approving by participating. E.g. a hundred years ago you could only convert cash into violence by recruiting and paying ordinary people. You couldn't wage a war that the people didn't want because people wouldn't sign up. Fifty years ago you could convert cash into indiscriminate violence with bombing campaigns, but you still needed the people if you wanted to invade instead of just destroying. Killer robots shake that up, and I fear brings us one step closer to the apocalyptic "corporation-nations" of scifi. I don't think it's likely at this juncture, but corporations sitting on cash could wage war on each other or other nations. Chiquita doesn't need the CIA to do their dirty work, they can just invade Nicaragua with an army of autonomous robots. Wealth is now directly translatable into force, which is somewhat terrifying.
- gibbitz 3y agoAnd the liberal elite will have to pry my murderbot from my cold dead hands! Seriously, defending these under the second ammendment will happen as soon as industry realizes they can bring down the price thenmore they make and they can charge more in the private sector. Think about the mass shootings that will happen when the shooter isn't even there -- or the shooter is backed up by a team of murderbots...
- everforward 3y agoI suspect they won't be protected. The phrasing is "the right to keep and bear arms", and there's a salient argument that because the robot is autonomous, it is the one bearing arms, not the human. Robots have no right to bear arms. A similar argument to the copyright office saying that AI generated stuff can't be copyrighted because the AI can't hold copyright. Another interesting corollary is whether EMP/jamming devices will be considered arms under the 2nd amendment if autonomous robots become common on the battlefield.
- akomtu 3y ago