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Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

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Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#111

Post by robotresearcher »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #31
neuro_imager wrote: post #3

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.

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.

It’s already against the law to murder people.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#112

Post by robotresearcher »

rqs wrote: post #86
jononor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you still remember The Three Laws of Robotics[0]? Not too many people still mentions it now days. Killing AI is not the same problem with nuclear weapon. Because AI weapon is far easier to make compare to nuclear one. Technically, you can do it right now with your DJI drone, all it takes is just to program it to do some automatic control. So I'm not quite optimistic about any attempt on limit those kind of weapons…

The three laws are a literary device, not a serious engineering proposal. The stories they were introduced in described exactly why they have such serious problems.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#113

Post by georgecmu »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #105

In a world of fighter-jets, satellites, and nukes, under the right circumstances this is a development which could cut both ways. From Wikipedia: " Quigley concludes that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy.[0] Democracy tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to buy and use. " [0] http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Weapons%20Systems%20and%20...

Do Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq qualify as natural experiments that test this theory?

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#114

Post by Parcissons »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #102
narrator wrote: post #18

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…

"Heroic" and "adventurous" OK, but- "nice"? I can't believe anyone ever thought that going to war -to kill and risk getting killed- could be "nice", except perhaps for murderous psychopaths.

I sense deep denial about your youth in this post. We all been there. When you are young you dream of going into history guns blazing. To declare that part as something that never happened is not only deeply dishonest with oneself and the species, it prepares the ground for future tragedies.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#115

Post by mungojelly »

neuro_imager wrote: post #3

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.

Ban Capitalism. Ban borders.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#116

Post by jstewartmobile »

georgecmu wrote: post #113
jstewartmobile wrote: post #105

In a world of fighter-jets, satellites, and nukes, under the right circumstances this is a development which could cut both ways. From Wikipedia: " Quigley concludes that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy.[0] Democracy tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to buy and use. " [0] http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Weapons%20Systems%20and%20...

Do Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq qualify as natural experiments that test this theory?

I doubt it. Jets, drones, and satellites vs peasants with automatics is a fairly stark disparity.

I'm making more of a long-term guess here. Unlike uranium enrichment or jet construction, I suspect that state-of-the-art drone manufacturing may eventually reach a level of affordability to where drone-facilitated hits, feuds, and drive-bys become a thing on domestic soil.

edit: And key part of the wiki quote is "the best weapons available". If the best weapon available is a six-shooter, and it has a price that almost everyone can afford, you've got an "equalizer". Democracy! If the best weapon available is a nuke, and it takes billions in supply chains and hundreds of millions in materials and know-how to make one, that is a lot of extra leverage for the guys at the top.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#117

Post by jblazevic »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #102
narrator wrote: post #18

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…

"Heroic" and "adventurous" OK, but- "nice"? I can't believe anyone ever thought that going to war -to kill and risk getting killed- could be "nice", except perhaps for murderous psychopaths.

It's a figure of speech meant to convey irony.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#118

Post by 0xbear »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #103
XorNot wrote: 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? Well, in a world where developing assault rifles is actually rather cheap, nobody has really developed any convincing countermeasures. Infantry still gets killed if you shoot them with an AK-47, etc. So there can be weapons without countermeasures. The point of the video is that the possibility exists to develop t…

The difference here is that you can buy everything shown in that video (except the explosive) on Amazon. The drone can even be bought pre-made, all you need to do is implement a more capable system for autonomous control, which is also doable for simpler scenarios.

This is in comparison to the significant difficulty of making a barrel or any of the mechanical parts for an AK-47.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#119

Post by nradov »

jononor wrote: post #74
nradov wrote: 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.

Such weapons have existed for a long time already and there's no practical way to write a legally enforceable treaty banning them. Do you really think that Russia or China would ever allow the USA to audit the source code in their weapons systems? It's ludicrous.

Re: Slaughterbots: Stop Autonomous Weapons [video]

#120

Post by int_19h »

wnkrshm wrote: post #83
oliwarner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's trivial to figure out where a ranging laser comes from, it's just that asymmetric warfare enables you to use them with impunity

And we already use lasers heavily because of this. Ever noticed those square things mounted to the forends of M16 and M4 rifles in Iraq and Afghanistan? E.g. this photo from 2001 - notice how literally every guy in it has one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Marines_humping_in_A...

That thing is called AN/PEQ-2, and it is an near infrared (NIR) laser/illuminator. The reason why it's infrared, is because the enemy can't see it unless they have night vision (which works in near infrared). The illuminator is then used as a flashlight, essentially, and the laser is used to designate targets.

Now, recently, groups like ISIS have been acquiring night vision devices in more substantial numbers. So now there's an arms race of sorts, where there are new devices like this that push the frequencies further down, such that most existing NIR devices cannot see it, but new and more expensive ones can. Presumably the same would apply to Trackpoint-like technology.

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