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Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#81

Post by SonicScrub »

CountDrewku wrote: post #22

They seem to be only presenting the negative aspects of "slaughterbots". Could they not potentially be better than human controlled devices since they should be able to more accurately target things and create less collateral damage? Of course, there's always the doomsday terminator scenario where they go haywire and decide to start targeting all humans....

It's worth noting that this line of reasoning has been used to justify the invention of machines that ended up causing many more deaths than before. Richard Gatling was inspired to invent the Gatling gun as a way to reduce the number of deaths by combat. His logic was that if could replace the lines of musket-wielding infantry with a small team that could fire just as many rounds, the number of soldiers an army would require would drop, and therefore the number of combat deaths would drop as well. This line of reasoning was proven wrong, as the deployment of Gatling guns simply caused more causalities in the American Civil War, and the gun's descendants enabled the mass slaughter in the First World War.

Similar logic was applied to bombers in the Second World War. If bombers could fly into enemy territory, hit key targets behind enemy lines and fly out, then the need for armies would go away. Instead we got The Blitz, the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, and the deadliest war in history.

Maybe this time is somehow different, but it's an important historical context to consider. Often the expansion of our destructive capabilities simply encourages more destruction.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#82

Post by nick238 »

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 think the latter. For what it's worth, the 'arms' that are still protected by the 2nd Amendment are still approximately the same as in 1787 (line of sight, bang bang), as you're legally restricted from owning guided bombs, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, etc, but even aside from that, you're practically restricted because of limited availability and/or extreme cost.

On the flip side, the hardware for Slaughterbots is basically here: TinyWhoops cost ~$100, say ~$100 to upgrade the ARM processor to one that can process realtime video, ~$100 for a shaped charge. So the hardware is super cheap, and once developed, the software to tie it all together has nearly no incremental cost. Once it's out there, that's the genie leaving the bottle.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#84

Post by tclancy »

credit_guy wrote: post #51

How silly. How can such a ban be enforced? Will Al Qaeda and ISIS sign the treaty? Will Assad sign it? Will he respect it any more than he respected the ban on chemical weapons?

How about a change to how we choose to live as a world and make them illegal to build, enforce those laws strictly, etc. The fact we live in a world where arms is a hyper-profitable amoral (at best) industry doesn't mean we should or have to.

>‘It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n09/jenny-turner/not-no-...

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#85

Post by bombcar »

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…

Do you even need to counter recoil if you only want to get off one shot?

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#86

Post by Arrath »

falcolas wrote: post #12
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.

> With some advancements autonomous drones could be more precise and reliable than human operated ones This is speculation at best, outright wrong at worst. Prove they're better than humans before employing them.

One example comes to mind, where an Apache helicopter gunner killed a journalist holding a large camera, thinking the silhouette looked like a rocket launcher.

One soldier made this mistake. What if a faulty image fitting/target classification algorithm deployed in a fleet of autonomous drones was vulnerable to a similar misclassification and started flagging some innocuous objects in people's hands as weapons? Would the rules of engagement be permissive enough for the drones to begin killing those people on their own, would there be human operators in the loop confirming and authorizing the strike?

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#87

Post by keiferski »

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…

On that note, it is interesting how a British military theorist more-or-less invented these tank tactics used by the Germans. (Although it is debated as to how much influence he actually had.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._H._Liddell_Hart

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#88

Post by vlads »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #57
jcims wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people need killed. Another way to look at this is improving the efficiency and accuracy of that process.

And that's the problem, there is always the Western idea that someone far away must absolutely be killed. And magically, when that person is killed, someone else pops up in their place who needs to be killed even more than the first guy.

If you think that that's a uniquely Western idea, then I have a bridge to sell you.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#89

Post by barbazoo »

jdmoreira wrote: post #78
barbazoo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

sure, looking at how they usually conduct business though, it seems unlikely that would happen. but whatever, it could theoretically happen, what do I know.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#90

Post by leetcrew »

bombcar wrote: post #85
nonameiguess wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you even need to counter recoil if you only want to get off one shot?

newton's third law says yes, at least to some extent. unless the barrel is perfectly aligned with the platform's center of gravity, it will be deflected (at least a little) before the projectile exits. and it's not trivial to hold a quadcopter or fixed wing craft steady enough to aim precisely in the first place.
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