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Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

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Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#61

Post by gpm »

gonzo41 wrote: post #60
gpm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sniping isn't that simple. The risk of counterfire is real. I think autonomous weapons will always be more successful in area denial and holding territory. Ie landmines.

The risk of counterfire is a lot smaller when the only thing to fire on is the few thousands of dollars worth of gun and electronics... and you could even armor it pretty effectively at the cost of mobility.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#62

Post by nick238 »

barbazoo wrote: post #50
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.

If you die in the game, you die for real!

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#64

Post by prussian »

gpm wrote: post #46
gonzo41 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hell you don't even need to go that high tech. Just make model jet aircraft cheaper, easier to handle, maybe even autonomous and I'd like to see those current anti-drone countermeasures stop it from zooming in and dropping whatever dumb payload someone could possibly want.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#65

Post by [deleted] »

_jal wrote: post #36
ccsnags wrote: post #23

In the book “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson there are mist-like swarms of nanobots that act as an immune system for regions against malicious nanobots. I can picture there being something like this with drones. There are problems to this. The major one being that, as mentioned by the posts on this thread, you have to develop the weapon to really know how to counter it.

That's the Extropian "Utility Fog" concept. A more direct science fiction forerunner of this is Bruce Stirling's _Islands in the Net_ (1988). There is a scene where cheap explosive drone swarms are used in terror attacks. And of course, there's the famous first line of _Count Zero_. "They sent a Slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on…

[deleted]

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#66

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

some_random wrote: post #41

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.

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

On the contrary, I would expect a site with a usersbase that screams incessantly about "privacy" and has an intense hatred of data-mining dark patterns, dislikes opaque ML models, would be against the lack of privacy and data-mining culminating in an execution by the state.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#68

Post by petermcneeley »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #11

This feels like the same thing that happened with tanks. The end of WW1 saw tanks deployed effectively. WW2 was then fought using entirely new tactics and strategies enabled by tanks (not least "blitzkrieg"). Britain and France, notably, hadn't really worked out how to use them effectively and so were left fighting the last war, horribly disadvantaged until they worked out how to catch up (though air power being deve…

This analysis is slightly off because WWI and WWII were great powers fighting each other. If the great powers were ever to directly fight this would still be nuclear war. Nothing about "swarming bots" has significantly changed this domain.

Where bots and swarm bots would be used is likely in asymmetric warfare.

"Aircraft carriers will be replaced with cheap drone swarm carriers" I would argue that Aircraft carriers are the size and cost due to large munitions and maintenance constraints.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#69

Post by nickthemagicman »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #11

This feels like the same thing that happened with tanks. The end of WW1 saw tanks deployed effectively. WW2 was then fought using entirely new tactics and strategies enabled by tanks (not least "blitzkrieg"). Britain and France, notably, hadn't really worked out how to use them effectively and so were left fighting the last war, horribly disadvantaged until they worked out how to catch up (though air power being deve…

> And so we'll end up fighting battles mostly by destroying drones instead of people.

This is one piece of possibly good news that it seems like everyone is overlooking.

Automation/Remote control applies not just to drones, but tanks, boats, other aerial vehicles, and maybe troops(after seeing that Boston Dynamics dog robot) etc. Seems like it will be a small squad of highly advanced human troops to move in after the Remotes to secure and maintain control of the area.

So many lives will be spared during wars.

However, this may be unbeatable tech by humans, so any future revolutions will be easily quelled by a gov't with a few drone pilots piloting a drone swarm in a room a thousand miles away.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#70

Post by nomoreplease »

ReptileMan wrote: post #28
marcus_holmes wrote: post #11

This feels like the same thing that happened with tanks. The end of WW1 saw tanks deployed effectively. WW2 was then fought using entirely new tactics and strategies enabled by tanks (not least "blitzkrieg"). Britain and France, notably, hadn't really worked out how to use them effectively and so were left fighting the last war, horribly disadvantaged until they worked out how to catch up (though air power being deve…

And I will spend the weekend developing autoaiming gun battery that shoots the .22LR that needs to ground one of those birds and we are at stage 1.

This isn’t realistic

1. This won’t be your average 2. Even if it was it could be hundreds of them

3. The military are developing large aircraft that function as essentially fighter aircraft that can destroy your tiny gun battery from 50-100 km away

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