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Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

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Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#71
post #47

Unfortunately I don't see a way this can be avoided.There has never been a weapon humanity imagined, designed, and built that it has not used. AI will be no different. A ban would be impossible to implement. What exactly would you ban? AI? Drones? facial recognition? Once you have a certain level of capability in these technologies, weaponising these things is the easy part.

I think the proposed ban is: don't develop weapons with software that can make the killing decisions without humans in the loop. That itself isn't so impossible a ban to make something like the CWC out of, but nations couldn't even stop 3D gun printing, despite the same sort of worries. Additionally, even with that ban, you could have the exact same video with the minor difference that each drone sends its video stre…

Weapons that make killing decisions without humans in the loop have existed for a long time. For example captor naval mines that sit tethered in place and then launch a torpedo when they detect a vessel nearby. Those aren't going away.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#72
post #68

Magnificent piece of technology! Except it gets defeated by a 2$ skimask. This kind of fearmongering isn't really useful as a way of creating political change. If you want people to participate in a reasonable and constructive dialog then convince them to do so with reasonble and constructive arguments.

Do you know that person identification based on gait detection is actively developed and getting decent results? Same with voice.

Also in a really grim scenario, could threaten/kill anyone that hides their face, be it with a skimask, burka or whatever. Or even require positive identification, that your face is found in the database.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be mostly about skynet scenarios, which is an entirely different problem.

Yes, I am aware. But weaponized drones and robots will give much more power to a future skynet or a lesser version that autonomously acts with minimal guidance which may unintentionally divert from human goals. This greatly increases the priority of AI Safety research. Some people I know kept arguing we can simply unplug the skynet and be mostly safe (despite some damage). These AI weapons make it clear that we will…

>But weaponized drones and robots will give much more power to a future skynet ...

Nah, not really. In the face of a proper hard-takeoff superintelligence, Skynet will look positively incompetent by comparison.

There's enough manufacturing equipment connected to the internet today that a superintelligence could physically manifest whatever it wishes. That's not to mention all the human labor it could coerce, trick or pay.

Put simply: as soon as the thing copied itself into the internet, that's game over. Better hope it likes us.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#74
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can make it considered unacceptable and against international law. Like chemical weapons. Which still happen, but not as much as they would if the U.S were, say, planning on using them all over the place, doing heavy R&D into them, and selling them to other people. Like, you know, robot kill bots.

How would you write such a treaty? Limit the CPU speed of weapons systems or something? Totally unenforceable.

Could forbid weapons to take kill actions themselves, each instance having to be activated by a human operator.

Could also forbid self-replication of weaponized robots.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#75
post #55

The message of this film feels extremely confused - probably because it's trying to single-mindedly push an agenda rather then explore the problem space. In a world where apparently drone-swarms are this cheap...what, no one ever developed counter-drones? It's the reason grey goo isn't a realistic scenario for nanotechnology: the goo has to replicate, whereas all the counter-goo has to do is kill it. Same issue: a wo…

> In a world where apparently drone-swarms are this cheap...what, no one ever developed counter-drones?

Perhaps someone has. The reason those are ineffective in the scenarios depicted is the same as with present day terrorism: In order to prevent these attacks you have to succeed every time whereas the terrorists only have to succeed once to wreak havoc.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#76
technically there is nothing new in this clip. People have been singled out and murdered for since we exist and sometimes nobody is singled out but everybody killed with a bomb. nonetheless there is something undeniably creepy and unsettling about being killed by a soulless machine.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#77
post #55

The message of this film feels extremely confused - probably because it's trying to single-mindedly push an agenda rather then explore the problem space. In a world where apparently drone-swarms are this cheap...what, no one ever developed counter-drones? It's the reason grey goo isn't a realistic scenario for nanotechnology: the goo has to replicate, whereas all the counter-goo has to do is kill it. Same issue: a wo…

I would just have an EMP wrist watch or something. Wouldn't take much of a pulse to knock out one of these bad boys.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#78
post #34

Terrifying and fascinating, as all good wake-up calls should be. In the future, miniature exploding drones could indeed autonomously, distinguish between cranium and body, plot a flight route and divebomb at their victim. But, I don't think these skull-crackers will be fully autonomous, even with significant advances and development. Given the chance of collateral damage and the "fuzziness" of algorithms, the kill co…

I think it's naive to think their primary focus will be collateral damage. Is that really the focus in any war at all ? https://www.vox.com/world/2017/11/16/16666628/iraq-nyt-casua... And that's just the targeting of the drones themselves. But how accurate is the intelligence targeting? Post-Snowden we found out that they were killing people mainly based on what SIM card the targets carried with them. Plus, they cons…

Theoretically we can make building and using them illegal, but there's no way to prevent building and using these machines.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#79
post #74
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you write such a treaty? Limit the CPU speed of weapons systems or something? Totally unenforceable.

Could forbid weapons to take kill actions themselves, each instance having to be activated by a human operator. Could also forbid self-replication of weaponized robots.

So you didn't bother trying to bypass your own rules without breaking them?

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#80
post #41

It's like WWI all over again. In WWI, people went happily off to war thinking it's going to be nice and heroic and adventurous like the good old days and they all get slaughtered in a pathetic pointless way in a blink of an eye by newly developed automated war machinery. The first AI War is going to be a really brutal wakeup call. The part in sci-fi where anyone actually has to aim to kill an enemy was a big romantic…

You don't even need robots for that. You just need an advanced scope on a rifle that can still be transported by a human, and the human is also the one that identifies targets. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0oGZ4TZr5k Now, we're not yet at the point where it's cost-effective to give every infantryman a thing like this - the scope alone costs more than most high-end sniper rifles. But costs will go…

I have to wonder how hard it would really be to detect and target somebody whose scope is laser-ranging and has wifi. These seem like tactical giveaways.

That's not to say this sort of technology couldn't be useful, but putting active broadcasting equipment on your gun is going to backfire in next generation warfare.

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