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

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#71

Post by whatshisface » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #58

whatshisface wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Killing something, once you know what and where it is, is not a problem most militaries have. It would be if there was a real war with a lot of things at once. That statement is only true for peacetime "executive action" wars with a 100:1 force ratio. It is an auxiliary role that has little to do with how things would go if there was a war between somewhat equal powers. The lessons of enforcing foreign policy on te…

Debatable. Armament stocks are ridiculously large, relative to value targets. Which makes sense, because cruise missiles cost less than radar systems. And I question whether "build one more drone" is an economically superior answer vs "build one more smart bomb."

Weapons caches are valuable targets, so unless all the world's major powers are keeping all of their missiles in a number of locations much smaller than the number of missiles their opponents have, I don't see how armament stocks can be large compared to the number of targets. That's even assuming that the only targets will be military targets, which wasn't even true in WWII.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#72

Post by gpm » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

prussian wrote: post #64

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…

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.

Honestly I feel like a model jet aircraft is a lot higher tech than my proposal :P

But certainly lots of ways to make use of autonomy, and I'm no expert on the best way.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#73

Post by stfp » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

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.

Just like with chemical weapons, banning them makes total sense to avoid overwhelming mass production and ubiquitous use.

You'll still see them used in targeted assassinations and some countries will have illegal military stockpiles, but that's very different from these things being treated like regular guns/ammo, being commercially available or legal to build.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#74

Post by tclancy » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

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.

I would hope (but definitely not expect) HN commenters to see past this and realize the problem isn't computer vision or firepower. It's tying those two together, writing some code and cutting it loose on humanity. Put it this way: if you wrote the code for an autonomous machine gun platform, would you park it in your house? I'm twenty years into this and I wouldn't trust my code that well.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#75

Post by nonameiguess » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

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…

While it isn't impossible in principle to make an aerial stabilized firing platform, I think you underestimate the difficulty. You definitely can't do it with a quadcopter, which doesn't have anywhere near the precision reaction capability to counteract rifle recoil. Even the most advanced fighter jets in existence right now can't do this. They need to use guide missiles for precision targeting.

In practice, a drone swarm is an area weapon. It's why it's kamikaze and relies on explosives right now. It can say it has the ability to find a specific person using computer vision and maybe it can, but it definitely can't make sure it only kills that one person and it can't kill from a distance.

No flying platform will be replacing snipers any time soon.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#76

Post by Arrath » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #58

whatshisface wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Killing something, once you know what and where it is, is not a problem most militaries have. It would be if there was a real war with a lot of things at once. That statement is only true for peacetime "executive action" wars with a 100:1 force ratio. It is an auxiliary role that has little to do with how things would go if there was a war between somewhat equal powers. The lessons of enforcing foreign policy on te…

Debatable. Armament stocks are ridiculously large, relative to value targets. Which makes sense, because cruise missiles cost less than radar systems. And I question whether "build one more drone" is an economically superior answer vs "build one more smart bomb."

There are never enough bombs to go around, especially smarter versions. Classic every problem is a nail and I have a hammer situation for commanders and strike planners once they have access to such munitions.

This bit NATO forces in Libya[1], for example.

Building drones may well be more scalable and economically viable than smart bombs. Consider a multiuse drone that could be utilized for battlefield recon with its camera, or the user snaps something akin to a BLU-108[2] smart munition onto the bottom of the chassis and now they have a remote controlled smart anti-tank weapon. The drone being multi use could increase the use cases, increasing the order size, decreasing the unit cost.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-runs-short-on-some...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-108

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#77

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

5560675260 wrote: post #7

I, for one, welcome our murderbot overlords. If we can't stop using drones to kill people, we should at least try to reduce collateral damage. With some advancements autonomous drones could be more precise and reliable than human operated ones, meaning that as an outcome fewer weddings will get blown up.

It’s all a matter of scope. Who is a combatant?

Any failure of the technology will be scoped away. If the drone blows up a city block targeting a kid with an ice cream cone, the cone will be classified as a potential weapon, therefore tragically the child was a militant.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#78

Post by jdmoreira » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #55

jdmoreira wrote: post #49

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 vi…

They'd have to get their hands on "hundreds of autonomous drones" and deploy them on site. Seems unlikely for any of the current terrorist organisations.

really? It’s not like this would cost more than 5K usd each. It doesn’t have to be military grade this is not much more than a DJI drone with better firmware and a micro railgun

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#79

Post by gpm » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #75

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…

While it isn't impossible in principle to make an aerial stabilized firing platform, I think you underestimate the difficulty. You definitely can't do it with a quadcopter, which doesn't have anywhere near the precision reaction capability to counteract rifle recoil. Even the most advanced fighter jets in existence right now can't do this. They need to use guide missiles for precision targeting. In practice, a drone…

I'm not suggesting a flying platform... but a ground mounted one moved into place by a human.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#80

Post by nonameiguess » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #66

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.

Whether they kill you with a remote-controlled drone, an autonomous drone, some manned platform, or just a man is orthogonal to whether the decision to kill you is based on privacy invasion and inscrutable threat detection algorithms.