Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned • Hacker News Board

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#41

Post by some_random » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

There's an interesting similarity between autonomous weapon systems and ransomware discussions. Both have just come to the attention of the mainstream audience (or audiences outside their usual niche) and discussion in those spaces is about where it was 5 years ago.

Also I'd really expect HN of all places to understand why banning what is basically computer vision based targeting systems is absurd.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#42

Post by neurobashing » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #26

Are these drone-based 'lethal autonomous weapons' markedly different to cruise missiles? Or is the alarm here about the fact that every man and his dog will be able to get their hands on them, when they cost $1000 instead of $1000000?

I guess the answer to me is "it depends". Modern cruise missiles are pretty much drones, but at the same time they're always what I guess I'd call "weapons of state". Big, expensive, and part of a large decision-making loop. You can't just lob one; someone signed for it. Attacks are planned in advance at high levels.

whereas this "slaughterbot" idea is smaller, low-cost, and with far less top-down control.

At least, as I understand it.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#43

Post by gonzo41 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #39

One of the reasons the attempted drone assassination of Maduro in 2018 failed was because police were using radio jammers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Caracas_drone_attack It's fairly easy and cheap to make an explosive drone and train a neural network to drive it using off the shelf components and open source software. It follows that it's inevitable that at least semi-autonomous drones will be made to counte…

Drones can't beat nylon nets or other low tech countermeasures. I think anti drone water cannons will outpace drone assassinations. And more than both, regular bombs and guns will still do most of the killing.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#44

Post by dgan » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #38

I don't fully understand how there is real difference? If you give a swarm of drones a kill zone and time limit, then they try them to kill every human in the area, how is that so different from MLRS salvo? Cruise missiles are already slaughterbots. You just give them location and they kill everyone in that location.

Location is wrong argument. The article specifically points out that those drones were said to follow retreating fighters, and keep shooting un-discriminately

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#45

Post by mdorazio » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

ru552 wrote: post #24

We have hand held weapons to combat drones today. See https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun-tactical https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/o0kzuq/the_security_o...

These countermeasures generally only work against drones that are not fully autonomous since they rely on disrupting communication with a ground controller. If your drone is perfectly happy to loiter and kill people based on facial recognition and some basic parameters, dronegun won't work. The other point to keep in mind is that cheap lethal drones are often designed to operate in swarm mode rather than individually. It's pretty difficult to knock out an autonomous swarm with weapons designed to target one drone at a time.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#46

Post by gpm » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

gonzo41 wrote: post #43

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #39

One of the reasons the attempted drone assassination of Maduro in 2018 failed was because police were using radio jammers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Caracas_drone_attack It's fairly easy and cheap to make an explosive drone and train a neural network to drive it using off the shelf components and open source software. It follows that it's inevitable that at least semi-autonomous drones will be made to counte…

Drones can't beat nylon nets or other low tech countermeasures. I think anti drone water cannons will outpace drone assassinations. And more than both, regular bombs and guns will still do most of the killing.

A motorized sniper rifle with face detection to find targets and a high rate of fire seems like it could exist with current technology, require about the same effort to deploy as a sniper with a typical sniper rifle, require less training from the person in the field, and be a hell of a lot more deadly. Same with a machine gun for closer quarters.

Regular bombs and guns probably still do most of the killing for quite awhile because of inertia, but I'm pretty firmly of the belief that they are outdated technology or will be soon, especially the regular guns part.

Regular bombs are arguably already outdated by missiles with (frequently autonomous) guidance... but for a lot of applications dumb explosives do work pretty well so those probably stick around for a long time.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#47

Post by Jtsummers » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

superbaconman wrote: post #25

Is this the official position of ieee? It's seems both unrealistic and unconstitutional (at least within the US).

It's a piece in IEEE Spectrum, lots of people submit articles there.

With respect to unconstitutionality, really? Are you also able to acquire and keep on your property a functioning ICBM or nuclear bomb? Arms controls exist in the US despite the 2nd amendment.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#48

Post by treeman79 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

xvilka wrote: post #6

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #2

The problem with arms races is that they are races: no one wants to be left behind. What is likely to happen is any major nation-state that signs a treaty agreeing to a ban will STILL secretly be researching and building autonomous (or nearly autonomous) weapon systems because they do not want to be left behind.

Winner will be the one who will design biological equivalents - genetically modified eagles or something similar.

We just had a gain of function escape ordeal that we are still coping with.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#49

Post by jdmoreira » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

Not with current tech but let’s say 5 years from now can’t a country or even a terrorist organization deploy hundreds of autonomous drones with charging stations that will effectively shoot everyone on sight? It’s like a school massacre but at a city scale or worse. Sure eventually everyone will go inside or underground but there is still incredible damage to be made in the meanwhile. You can equip these with heat vision and they will even hunt you at night. This is also incredible tech for hunting fugitives. In the US the population has enough handguns that they can probably fight these off to some extent but in Europe it would be impossible.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#50

Post by barbazoo » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

crumbshot wrote: post #16

Not only should there should be no autonomous drones, the non-autonomous remote controller hardware should be wired up such that if they are shot out of the sky, this kills the human operator and anyone sitting nearby. This would be much fairer than the current system of gamified point-and-click murder.

As horrible as this sounds, I like the "real world consequence" part of it. Maybe this would lead to people reconsidering their participation in those war games.