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Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

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Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#141

Post by randomtoast »

jandrese wrote: post #4

This is only a few days after the massive drone attack in Russia. Only a matter of time until we have drones smart enough to dodge bullets (or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing) while flying at breakneck speeds being controlled by AIs we don't fully understand. The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future.

And Great Britain just announced plans to deliver 100,000 of them to Ukraine. Ukraine lacks the manpower compared to Russia. It seems logical to strengthen their forces by deploying these flying mini terminators. I believe we are not far from large-scale drone warfare. In World War II, we had epic tank and aircraft battles; now, the time has come for autonomous drone battlefields.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#142

Post by actionfromafar »

david-gpu wrote: post #121
impossiblefork wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Here in Sweden we instituted mandatory military service we did so because we wanted to ensure that there was no military class that if they decide to can take over. We knew the cost, and the cost is worth it. In normal times the cost is simply to do ones mandatory military service. This protects against coups, ensures your power in society and prevents groups of officers and soldiers etc. from taking over.

> This protects against coups, ensures your power in society and prevents groups of officers and soldiers etc. from taking over. Meanwhile Spain suffered an attempted coup in 1981 [0] while mandatory military service was still in place [1]. The conscripts did not play a role in protecting democracy. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Service_(Spa…

There are no silver bullets. It's just that having (solely) an elite warrior class is an extra risk.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#143

Post by lazide »

energy123 wrote: post #117
jandrese wrote: post #4

This is only a few days after the massive drone attack in Russia. Only a matter of time until we have drones smart enough to dodge bullets (or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing) while flying at breakneck speeds being controlled by AIs we don't fully understand. The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future.

All hard countered by a laser like the Iron Beam, no? Unless there's a hard counter to the hard counter?

a laser needs a line of sight and dwell time. drones flying 3 ft off the ground, in between bushes and trees, at 100+ mph? not an easy situation.

ramp up power levels so dwell time might only be 1/2 second? maybe. but then there is a race for rapid target discrimination. and then ablative armor on the drones (cheap and easy to 3d print), and backup cameras, etc.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#144

Post by lazide »

bamboozled wrote: post #93
bravoetch wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and so far it's much easier to drive a van into a crowd of people. Nobody has tried to mandate tech in cars that detects and prevents such malicious behavior.

Can you drive a van into a group of people without even being physically present though ?

easier than a drone, technically. using the same tools and techniques too.

a van is just a bigger, more inherently stable drone.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#145

Post by lazide »

tonyarkles wrote: post #92
bamboozled wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lunatic will be able to wipe out school children playing outside and have little chance of getting caught, for example. Nice.

I mean... yeah, that’s a definite possibility. If a lunatic has access to explosives, there’s an infinite number of ways they could do that. The hard part is that there is no effective way to regulate anything in the supply chain involved except for the explosives themselves. Everything else is super commoditized at this point and, other than the props, very multi-purpose. The first significant hexcopter I built used…

If one is a lunatic, there are easy to find recipes for making bulk (albeit dangerous to be around) explosives.

one thing in societies favor though - sufficiently unstable lunatics tend to self delete themselves in various ways by being unstable lunatics. few tend to be in the “sweet” spot of dangerous lunatics who are stable and focused enough to follow through successfully with a dangerous plan. thankfully.

For example - most people who could synthesize multi-kilo quantities of TATP without blowing themselves up and successfully build a DIY drone to carry it have better and more productive things to do with their lives. at least in the west.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#146

Post by miki123211 »

This makes me wonder what the "best" vehicle for human racing would be like, if there was no requirement for a human driver.

Let's say your task is to move a human from A to B (by a pre-designated route) as fast as possible. The only conditions are vehicle weight, no outside radio contact and no damaging the road (assume each vehicle goes separately, so e.g. slip stream effects don't matter). You can rely on the human to drive or use AI, you can go on the ground or fly through the air, anything is allowed. What would be the best way to do this?

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#147

Post by baq »

arcticfox wrote: post #101
stackedinserter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH there's no mass adoption of autonomous drones after 3+ years of real active war between two technologically advanced nations.

Remember when TB-2s and grenade bombers were the peak of drone technology in Ukraine? That was like 2 years ago, now the frontlines are draped in equal parts anti-drone netting and fiberoptic threads.

The recent picture of sun rising or setting above a field of fiber threads really drives the point home. At peace time you have to pay $50k to get fiber to the home. At war it’s coming at you at 50mph and you can’t do anything to stop it.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#148

Post by lolc »

worldsayshi wrote: post #132
energy123 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All hard countered by a laser like the Iron Beam, no? Unless there's a hard counter to the hard counter?

The obvious counter to a laser could be 'more drones'? And maybe just have the drones sneak up close to the ground.

I always hear this sneak up thing and think about how birds can be caught with netting. And all the barbed wire in old battlefields. I don't think drones will be able to meaningfully sneak up to a laser.

Of course more drones works. But more drones here is less drones there. It means lasers are an effective deterrent against opportunistic attacks.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#149

Post by closewith »

close04 wrote: post #137
NegativeLatency wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the slower speed is a closer fit to combat drones (which have a payload and sometimes a fiber optic cable)? Also watching MultiGP they sorta move/accelerate too fast for me to fully appreciate the maneuvering. Feels kinda similar to the innovation around manned aircraft about 100 years ago when we went from toy/observation platform to killing machine in only a couple of decades. With the ardupilot news toda…

> which have a payload and sometimes a fiber optic cable The optic cable is for the human pilot. An AI piloted drone doesn't need it.

Although even autonomous combat/ISTAR drones may require fibre spools for BDA, ISTAR, etc.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#150

Post by krisoft »

trhway wrote: post #83
impossiblefork wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And i think removing people from the battlefield is a good thing. It is very dangerous, since it will mean that an organization with enough drones can dominate society on its own. Much better if humans were battlefield-relevant.

It is understandable pure-logic thinking until you're the one to be made battlefield-relevant. And if you look at Russia your logic does fail on that example - no amount of human losses affect Russia's behavior in the current war as they are sure that Ukraine will run out of soldiers before Russia does. So, from Russia's POV the faster the grinder the sooner their victory.

> It is understandable pure-logic thinking until you're the one to be made battlefield-relevant.

Battlefields have the inconvenient property of sometimes coming to where you are. Even if you would rather not participate in any way.

Currently in democratic countries one of the brakes on war is that you need "boots" on the ground, and "boots" on the ground results in caskets draped in flags on TV. Which result in people not voting for you come next election. If you don't need humans to fight on the ground anymore (or you can get away with drastically fewer humans on the battlefield) then you will get a lot more war, and a lot more battlefields in a lot more places.

That's the problem. First order effect is of course good for the humans who don't need to die on the battlefield to achieve some goals. Second order effect is what I'm worried about. The lot more suffering caused by a lot more wars and battlefields in a less stable world.

And that is assuming you need the resources of a state to fight these autonomous wars. If the tech is cheap enough, and hard to "control" enough that it is available for organised crime you might see it used in assassinations, gang warfare, and protection rackets. And then we all will live on battlefields. Third order effects are the people hurt by the anti-drone weapons missing their target or activating the wrong time. Fourth order effects are all the constraints and weird technology restrictions they will put on tech trying to stop the proliferation of autonomous drones.

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