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Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

newscientist.com

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Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#61

Post by bravoetch »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #55

What's gonna happen when the redneck militias start building these on their compounds? I'm terrified of domestic implications - police departments can't go buy old military gear to squash these yet.

I've thought about a parallel version of this since I was a child and learned about the existence of nuclear weapons being a 'nation state' level of difficulty. Over time I assume an individual will wield more destructive power. How long before any individual person can conjure up world-ending munitions?

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#62

Post by tootie »

inigyou wrote: post #29

Is this new? I'm sure I've heard about it in the Iran and Gaza wars. Or is this the first time a soldier was killed, all those other times being civilians?

Arguably the V-2 was fully autonomous as well. It was just indiscriminate.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#63

Post by MSFT_Edging »

alex7o wrote: post #45
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'd consider a trap an "autonomous weapon". The trap cannot select a target. It will go off for anyone unlucky enough to step in its trigger. An autonomous drone will select a target and pull the trigger. It fills in the position of a human pulling a trigger, which is a decision. Maybe if robots began deciding where to lay mines, i could hand it to you.

I mean by some measure a trap can be worse, as many people have died from mines years after no conflict.

I'm not saying one is better or worse, just outlining the difference.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#64

Post by john_strinlai »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #33
sebastiennight wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're fighting for their country's existence. I would use every weapon in my disposal; and I'm a pacifist who hates violence. I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". I don't think you realize the creativity and variety we human…

>> I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". Wait till you hear that I'm also an anti-nationalist :P But I'm also pragmatic. Nations aren't going away and they have armies and they like to invade each other. If my country were to be…

>I think I do but why do you say this? I didn't understand how it connects to the rest of your comment, or to mine.

not the parent, but i have a guess.

they mention the variety of weapons because some weapons are abhorrent. designed to be maximally painful, for the maximum amount of time, purely to bring about maximum suffering.

"every weapon at your disposal" includes those weapons. and that is really difficult to square with "im a pacifist", even when considering conditional pacifism.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#66

Post by throwaway_19sz »

Can someone who got past the paywall tell me what the definition of “fully autonomous” is here? I’m guessing it means the software selected targets based on something the human operators decided when they launched the drone? Is the criteria geographic (any humans in a certain zone), or known individuals (facial recognition), or based on enemy uniforms/visual descriptions, or a specific behavioural rule (anyone emerging from this building), or what?

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#67

Post by ordinaryradical »

sarchertech wrote: post #56
TomasBM wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is in "active"/intelligent versus "passive"/dumb targetting that's performed by the machine. The missile, once fired, has the general vicinity (if not the exact position) of the target and is armed by the operator. Therefore, the operator is fully accountable for the targetting. Same goes for the landmines, once placed. Hitting civilians is reckless at best, and negligent at worst. An autonomous weapon…

> Same goes for the landmines, once placed. Landmines can be dropped from the air by the thousands and many land mines can survive for decades. Placing a landmine anywhere is essentially the same as firing a bullet blindly through time. And no individual soldier has ever been held accountable for a landmine that killed a civilian years down the road. Which doesn’t make what you said about drones any less awful. Just…

> Placing a landmine anywhere is essentially the same as firing a bullet blindly through time.

Beautifully said and truly clarifies how evil of a weapon they are.

With that said, are these drones paradoxically more ethical because their loiter time is dramatically shorter and therefore won’t harm civilians after the conflict is over?

But I think there is an extreme ethical boundary we are traversing by putting targeting and trigger-pulling in the hands of a robot. The ways this will later be abused by authoritarian regimes is just staggering. We are reducing the necessary footprint of a loyal junta and automating dictatorships with this technology. It’s very disturbing.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#68

Post by bluealienpie »

robotresearcher wrote: post #26

We've had loitering munitions that choose their own target autonomously for a long time, for example anti-tank weapons that climb up after being released from a plane or helicopter then sit on a parachute until spotting one or more tanks and firing warheads at them. The superficial new thing here is the exact quadcopter form factor, but the significance is the new price point. You bet the loitering anti-tank weapon c…

I think the difference between a targeting a specific piece of military hardware compared to training an AI model to target humans and infrastructure is quite different. This explains why drones that get misdirected will target oil infrastructure in friendly countries.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#70

Post by wat10000 »

sebastiennight wrote: post #28
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #21

A few thoughts. First, I advise a modicum of skepticism to be retained in the face of such news. Ukraine is, after all, in the middle of an existential crisis and must take every advantage it can, even if it's just scaring Russian invaders further (I bet both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are already pretty scared of drones). Additionally: "“There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothi…

> They're fighting for their country's existence. I would use every weapon in my disposal; and I'm a pacifist who hates violence. I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". I don't think you realize the creativity and variety we human…

I don't think you realize the creativity and variety we humans have put to use when oppressing conquered peoples if you think resisting an invasion with every means available is the incorrect choice because it kills people.
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