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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

#91

Post by Chu4eeno »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #54
saltcured wrote: post #4

I think the ancestor drones are land and sea mines, or really any kind of trap that dislocates the timing and control of the "trigger" from the person who launched it into the environment. These newer drones have just gained locomotion instead of having to wait for victims to come to them.

Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics was based on automated killing — which he beautifully disavowed in peacetime [1]. Which historically is one of the main reasons we think about “Artificial Intelligence” instead of cybernetics (Wiener kind of pissed off the defense dept). [1] “A Scientist Rebels,” 1947 http://lanl-the-back-story.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-scientist-...

> Which historically is one of the main reasons we think about “Artificial Intelligence” instead of cybernetics (Wiener kind of pissed off the defense dept).

Cybernetics and artificial intelligence are two distinct fields, though? I have friends with degrees in both, it's not some long lost alternative name for AI (though we're unlikely to see something like Project Cybersyn using cybernetics today instead of some overly deep neural net).

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

#92

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #22
blitzar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gulf war (1991) tv broadcasts of cruise missiles 100 feet above the road sure look(ed) a lot like autonomous drones on their way to killed humans to me.

Wasn't it just flying to a particular GPS, coordinate and exploding? That's quite a bit different than flying to an area and killing anything that moves...

Gulf war tomahawks didn't use GPS. They flew on terrain following radar (over Iran to improve accuracy), inertial reference, and image correlation for the final phase of attack.

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

#93

Post by wartywhoa23 »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #8
damnitbuilds wrote: post #2

If you drop a dumb bomb on an area, it kills everyone there. If you release an autonomous drone in an area, it will probably kill everyone there, but might use its AI to decide not to kill some people there. Why is the latter worse than the former ?

Seriously, what sort of fuckwit downvoted this ?

I did, for one, for your failure to understand the danger and implications of getting rid of all human accountability of the military for killing people.

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

#94

Post by namuol »

> “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”

This is a clear war crime. We don’t need to update any international laws, do we? This is by definition indiscriminate, like landmines or chemical weapons.

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

#95

Post by namuol »

tootie wrote: post #62
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.

> “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”

This is also indiscriminate.

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

#96

Post by michael1999 »

namuol wrote: post #94

> “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.” This is a clear war crime. We don’t need to update any international laws, do we? This is by definition indiscriminate, like landmines or chemical weap…

Landmines are not illegal, except for signatories of the Ottawa Treaty.

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

#97

Post by hartbook »

delichon wrote: post #31

This was back in 2026, before they released the Dredd series for civilian applications with onboard due processing and agents for prosecution, defense, judge, jury and executioner with millisecond response times, drastically reducing price per perpetrator.

you got me checking my calendar app

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

#98

Post by Chu4eeno »

Sharlin wrote: post #57
dieortin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that in those systems a human chose the target. Here, an AI does. > but humans are more likely to make this kind of mistake more than a computer or AI model Based on?

What "choosing the target" means has been fuzzy for a long time too. We've had beyond-visible-range missiles for a long time that are basically "fly to this grid square and find a target".

I don't think people realize how much horsepower are in missiles now.

The JSM has at least one multicore computer + IR camera + RF homing for target identification (plus GPS, terrain matching/following and inertial for navigation). It can automatically identify not only the best target (and recognize and ignore decoys etc), but also the optimal weak spots to impact.

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

#99

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

Anti ship missiles also need to search for targets once in the area

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

#100

Post by rayiner »

namuol wrote: post #94

> “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.” This is a clear war crime. We don’t need to update any international laws, do we? This is by definition indiscriminate, like landmines or chemical weap…

What do you think is the definition of “war crime?”
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