9 ms·

Don't worry, no AI will ever dogfight with you. It will shoot you down from 40km away with a fire-and-forget weapon.

fnordpiglet 2y ago
I think more likely a AI kill bot drone will be the way we die. You can build ten for the cost of one fire and forget missile, and it will be a lot more precise only killing the humans and leaving the infrastructure intact.
- amluto 2y ago
  What, exactly, is the difference between an “AI kill bot drone” and a missile?
  - uoaei 2y ago
    See: Slaughterbots (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      While a compelling short film, those tiny quadcopters are handicapped missiles. They fly slowly enough that modern anti-drone systems could engage them; their use of visual sensors leaves them vulnerable to laser blinding. Self-destructing drones are missiles trading manoeuvrability for speed.
      - ribosometronome 2y ago
        Going to be expensive to equip every area with anti-drone systems.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - 0171481 2y ago
        Tiny missiles which are practically cost-free compared to conventional weapons, difficult to track by your enemies, and not just difficult to take out of the air, but oftentimes several orders of magnitude more expensive than the drone itself. Part of their effectiveness lies in the economic asymmetry involved.
        fnordpiglet 2y ago
        Yes in the recent Iran attack on Israel the interceptors cost about $3mm each and the drones range from $20k to $2k. That asymmetry leads to a calculus of attack through overwhelming mass that’s so vast it’s impractical if not impossible to resist it. https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-launch-than-shoot-down-ukraine-nyt-2023-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-... https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/19/missile-drone-pentagon-houthi-attacks-iran-00132480 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/19/missile-drone-penta... https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage/card/israel-s-cost-of-intercepting-iranian-barrage-is-put-at-over-550-million-uamrOjZkoRBNGRfjWbD6 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-co... In fact the US DoD is already proposing a “hellscape” capability this is precisely built around this idea as the primary method of countering China in the future. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/08/hellscape-dod-launches-massive-drone-swarm-program-counter-china/389797/ https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/08/hellscape-dod-...
        0171481 2y ago
        Same thing happening in Ukraine. I actually think this is one of the huge stories that almost nobody is talking about right now. Sudden paradigm shift means big changes can happen quickly. You have a fantastic username btw.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > stories that almost nobody is talking about right now It is being talked about non-stop in military and international relations news. The point isn’t that drones are being ignored. It is that self-destructing drones are best thought of as a new niche of missile, one that is cheaper and more manoeuvrable than a conventional missile at the expense of speed. (As opposed to drones' traditional framing as tiny planes.)
  - f4ncyp4ntz 2y ago
    [dead]
  - fnordpiglet 2y ago
    I can drop a cluster bomb filled with drones into a city, army base, factory and they kill everyone with precision and are collectively almost unstoppable. Yes flying a large drone a few hundred miles over enemy fortifications is quite stoppable compared to a hypersonic missile. So, don’t do that.
    - davemp 2y ago
      > I can drop a cluster bomb filled with drones into a city, army base, factory and they kill everyone with precision and are collectively almost unstoppable. Citation needed.
    - hackerlight 2y ago
      Defensive laser weapon
      - salad-tycoon 2y ago
        Lasers rays? More like a ray of failure. Shift your spectrum, Microwaves are in and lasers are out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39873977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39873977 And https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-microwave-weapons-could-defend-against-swarms-of-combat-drones/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-microwave-wea...
  - harshreality 2y ago
    Reusability, good maneuverability, range, loiter time. Something to close the gap to dispense cheaper munitions than long-range guided missiles. And to do so with a dramatically faster OODA loop. Flying sausages with rocket motors and stubby wings don't do very well by most metrics.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    US Export control frameworks managed to keep missile technologies from reimplemented by bored teenagers while actual guided munition technology were left stalling for decades(for better or worse - Ukraine is running out of SAMs daily), resulting in media narrative disconnect between those.
  - toss1 2y ago
    The AI bot/drone returns home It is also a lot more maneuverable and has far more flexible mission profiles
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
amluto 2y ago
In a small skirmish in which the side with the AI has a lot of resources, sure. In a large scale war, I’m not so sure. A fire-and-forget weapon with a 40km range is expensive and might be a scarce resource. Bullets are much cheaper, and if the AI can fly itself close enough to shoot you, it can do so inexpensively. And this is not to mention that a 40km range weapon requires targeting that works at 40km.
- bearjaws 2y ago
  Yup, any protracted war will resemble WW2 or Ukraine within a year. It's an ugly truth that you need an advanced infrastructure to build these sophisticated weapons, that level of infrastructure is easily destroyed.
  - ptero 2y ago
    Those weapons are sophisticated today because they were developed by the western military industrial complex under heavy oversight by politicians, neither of which had a need for a cheap, effective, high explosive drone. Fundamentally, those cost a few thousand dollars in components at most. The reason the end products are expensive is that they are not optimized for mass production. Which, for better or worse, is starting to change. My 2c.
- harshreality 2y ago
  Highly maneuverable reusable aircraft (even drones) are expensive, and a scarcer resource than missiles. In modern great power military conflict, if you get to the point where you can fly F-16s or a hypermaneuverable AI dogfighting drone into visual range against an opponent [with inferior planes] who's out of missiles, haven't you already won? If the opponent isn't inferior in dogfights, then instead of using ~$1mil munitions as expendables, you're using planes (and possibly pilots) as expendables. That's not a good or economical trade-off when missiles are as good as they are today.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  Bullets are cheap, but an AI airplane with a gun is far more expensive than almost any fire and forget missile since it is effectively a larger, more complex, more expensive fire and forget missile.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bee_rider 2y ago
A missile is just a dogfighting AI that shoots every bullet all at once.
HL33tibCe7 2y ago
> It will shoot you down from 40km away with a fire-and-forget weapon. It's already happening in Gaza. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...
- salad-tycoon 2y ago
  Wow. So much wow. Lavender and The Gospel “AI” used to identify individuals and buildings to bomb with the goal being to drop buildings on a hamas suspected person even if 10-100s of civilians are present with “dumb” bombs So much to dissect here but will say this, I’ve been waiting for this story for a while. I think it’s debatable whether it’s wise to have any kind of online presence what with the NSA taking over everything from your router to your watch to your doctor’s office and smart toilet. I don’t work in the tech field but what would these systems look like? Basically they ingest intelligence like phone calls and logs and whatever else they get and it spits out a list of people with associated last known addresses and estimated civilian casualties and then lists supporting evidence? Is this just ML that’s been worked on for years or is this some GPT based advancements? Can their system analyze voice, photos etc and it just predicts like a GPT? Ps I’m not pro or anti anybody. I have no dog in this fight and I’m not versed enough to make a judgement. My heart goes to everyone affected. What a disaster and a tragedy war is.
RobotToaster 2y ago
I personally see this as a potential of drones being used to shoot down other drones or missiles, and the inevitable drones trying to shoot down those drones.
barbazoo 2y ago
Semantics, dogfight with the missile then :)
woopsn 2y ago
Look at drone tactics deployed in Ukraine. It's shocking. Not in the future but right now, modern warfare is a swarm of <$100 jerry rigged recycled devices flying around delivering a few ounces of explosive whatever head or body can be accessed.

I think more likely a AI kill bot drone will be the way we die. You can build ten for the cost of one fire and forget missile, and it will be a lot more precise only killing the humans and leaving the infrastructure intact.

amluto 2y ago
What, exactly, is the difference between an “AI kill bot drone” and a missile?
- uoaei 2y ago
  See: Slaughterbots (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    While a compelling short film, those tiny quadcopters are handicapped missiles. They fly slowly enough that modern anti-drone systems could engage them; their use of visual sensors leaves them vulnerable to laser blinding. Self-destructing drones are missiles trading manoeuvrability for speed.
    - ribosometronome 2y ago
      Going to be expensive to equip every area with anti-drone systems.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - 0171481 2y ago
      Tiny missiles which are practically cost-free compared to conventional weapons, difficult to track by your enemies, and not just difficult to take out of the air, but oftentimes several orders of magnitude more expensive than the drone itself. Part of their effectiveness lies in the economic asymmetry involved.
      - fnordpiglet 2y ago
        Yes in the recent Iran attack on Israel the interceptors cost about $3mm each and the drones range from $20k to $2k. That asymmetry leads to a calculus of attack through overwhelming mass that’s so vast it’s impractical if not impossible to resist it. https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-launch-than-shoot-down-ukraine-nyt-2023-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-... https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/19/missile-drone-pentagon-houthi-attacks-iran-00132480 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/19/missile-drone-penta... https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage/card/israel-s-cost-of-intercepting-iranian-barrage-is-put-at-over-550-million-uamrOjZkoRBNGRfjWbD6 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-co... In fact the US DoD is already proposing a “hellscape” capability this is precisely built around this idea as the primary method of countering China in the future. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/08/hellscape-dod-launches-massive-drone-swarm-program-counter-china/389797/ https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/08/hellscape-dod-...
        0171481 2y ago
        Same thing happening in Ukraine. I actually think this is one of the huge stories that almost nobody is talking about right now. Sudden paradigm shift means big changes can happen quickly. You have a fantastic username btw.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > stories that almost nobody is talking about right now It is being talked about non-stop in military and international relations news. The point isn’t that drones are being ignored. It is that self-destructing drones are best thought of as a new niche of missile, one that is cheaper and more manoeuvrable than a conventional missile at the expense of speed. (As opposed to drones' traditional framing as tiny planes.)
- f4ncyp4ntz 2y ago
  [dead]
- fnordpiglet 2y ago
  I can drop a cluster bomb filled with drones into a city, army base, factory and they kill everyone with precision and are collectively almost unstoppable. Yes flying a large drone a few hundred miles over enemy fortifications is quite stoppable compared to a hypersonic missile. So, don’t do that.
  - davemp 2y ago
    > I can drop a cluster bomb filled with drones into a city, army base, factory and they kill everyone with precision and are collectively almost unstoppable. Citation needed.
  - hackerlight 2y ago
    Defensive laser weapon
    - salad-tycoon 2y ago
      Lasers rays? More like a ray of failure. Shift your spectrum, Microwaves are in and lasers are out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39873977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39873977 And https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-microwave-weapons-could-defend-against-swarms-of-combat-drones/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-microwave-wea...
- harshreality 2y ago
  Reusability, good maneuverability, range, loiter time. Something to close the gap to dispense cheaper munitions than long-range guided missiles. And to do so with a dramatically faster OODA loop. Flying sausages with rocket motors and stubby wings don't do very well by most metrics.
- numpad0 2y ago
  US Export control frameworks managed to keep missile technologies from reimplemented by bored teenagers while actual guided munition technology were left stalling for decades(for better or worse - Ukraine is running out of SAMs daily), resulting in media narrative disconnect between those.
- toss1 2y ago
  The AI bot/drone returns home It is also a lot more maneuverable and has far more flexible mission profiles

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

amluto 2y ago

In a small skirmish in which the side with the AI has a lot of resources, sure. In a large scale war, I’m not so sure. A fire-and-forget weapon with a 40km range is expensive and might be a scarce resource. Bullets are much cheaper, and if the AI can fly itself close enough to shoot you, it can do so inexpensively. And this is not to mention that a 40km range weapon requires targeting that works at 40km.

bearjaws 2y ago
Yup, any protracted war will resemble WW2 or Ukraine within a year. It's an ugly truth that you need an advanced infrastructure to build these sophisticated weapons, that level of infrastructure is easily destroyed.
- ptero 2y ago
  Those weapons are sophisticated today because they were developed by the western military industrial complex under heavy oversight by politicians, neither of which had a need for a cheap, effective, high explosive drone. Fundamentally, those cost a few thousand dollars in components at most. The reason the end products are expensive is that they are not optimized for mass production. Which, for better or worse, is starting to change. My 2c.
harshreality 2y ago
Highly maneuverable reusable aircraft (even drones) are expensive, and a scarcer resource than missiles. In modern great power military conflict, if you get to the point where you can fly F-16s or a hypermaneuverable AI dogfighting drone into visual range against an opponent [with inferior planes] who's out of missiles, haven't you already won? If the opponent isn't inferior in dogfights, then instead of using ~$1mil munitions as expendables, you're using planes (and possibly pilots) as expendables. That's not a good or economical trade-off when missiles are as good as they are today.
dghlsakjg 2y ago
Bullets are cheap, but an AI airplane with a gun is far more expensive than almost any fire and forget missile since it is effectively a larger, more complex, more expensive fire and forget missile.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bee_rider 2y ago

A missile is just a dogfighting AI that shoots every bullet all at once.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago

> It will shoot you down from 40km away with a fire-and-forget weapon. It's already happening in Gaza. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...

salad-tycoon 2y ago
Wow. So much wow. Lavender and The Gospel “AI” used to identify individuals and buildings to bomb with the goal being to drop buildings on a hamas suspected person even if 10-100s of civilians are present with “dumb” bombs So much to dissect here but will say this, I’ve been waiting for this story for a while. I think it’s debatable whether it’s wise to have any kind of online presence what with the NSA taking over everything from your router to your watch to your doctor’s office and smart toilet. I don’t work in the tech field but what would these systems look like? Basically they ingest intelligence like phone calls and logs and whatever else they get and it spits out a list of people with associated last known addresses and estimated civilian casualties and then lists supporting evidence? Is this just ML that’s been worked on for years or is this some GPT based advancements? Can their system analyze voice, photos etc and it just predicts like a GPT? Ps I’m not pro or anti anybody. I have no dog in this fight and I’m not versed enough to make a judgement. My heart goes to everyone affected. What a disaster and a tragedy war is.

RobotToaster 2y ago

I personally see this as a potential of drones being used to shoot down other drones or missiles, and the inevitable drones trying to shoot down those drones.

barbazoo 2y ago

Semantics, dogfight with the missile then :)

woopsn 2y ago

Look at drone tactics deployed in Ukraine. It's shocking. Not in the future but right now, modern warfare is a swarm of <$100 jerry rigged recycled devices flying around delivering a few ounces of explosive whatever head or body can be accessed.