You don’t often get a military holding a press conference to announce it has committed a war crime.
Ah, splendid. We are barreling towards the Forever Winter nicely.
Maybe we should build a few dozen silos.
51 would be a good number
Eh. I see this as an "flying landmine," not an existential Terminator kind of thing.
A computer is not making a "decision" to kill. Its a machine. It's bomb exploding when triggered, just with extra steps of flying to a specific spot.
It's morally problematic. Like landmines.
But I think people are falsly attributing anything resembling sentience to this system, like they do with conversation-trained LLMs. Humans made the “decision” way ahead of time, just like when they set up land mines or perform a bombing run.
2 years ago 🙄
dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.
you roll your eyes while most others are sweating profusely
Yeah, let's hope we don't make a habit out of this. Landmines are already bad enough.
The only thing that could have stopped this would have been the lower classes, worldwide, becoming a unified front for the last century or more. These killbots are not only here, already and being used, they will become the default within 5 years. Watch.
None of the world's governments have lifted a finger in the last year of continuous, televised genocides of civilians, women, the elderly, and children. They certainly aren't going to draw a line in the sand for unseen killbots that nebulously might be responsible for some civilian deaths at some point in the future.
Not only will these be used in war, these will be used in civilian life too. How do you think the world's wealthy plan to stay that way?
They know very well that in the past when inequality has risen to these levels, they fall. They know it's because no guards will chose them over the mass of, now angry, people that the guards were birthed from and spent their lives with.
The killbots are for you and me baby. It is already written.
Hey, weapons have been banned before. (And continuous genocide is kind of just the normal situation globally)
That being said, yes, a fully autonomous, self-supporting army would have massive, terrifying social implications. Few people are talking about it, but it has to be the biggest existential threat we're facing.
This sounds like it's just a drone that chases anything that moves wherever it's deployed, though, not something more nefarious. Against a known, unarmed target shelling would achieve the same thing.
Weapons have been banned before, but nukes are the only things that actually don't get used. A ban on automous weapons will require the same situation. A country is going to have to kill hundreds of thousands, or millions of people at once, and then everyone will have to stockpile these as a deterrent against use.
Even then, that's just against other countries. Nobody stops nations from doing anything and everything to the citizens they own.
To your second point about shelling, I disagree. This is different in extremely important ways. These are cheaper to create, easier to run in undetected, and do far far less collateral damage.
They are also a relatively new technology. You could have looked at the first muskets and said "definitely an advantage, but not an insane amount compared to seasoned archers and siege equipment. We can't really compare unguided munitions in their highly evolved form, to autonomous drones that are just getting started.
Thing is that both are currently being used it droves in Ukraine. About anything bar chemical or nuclear has.
The problem with land mines is that they exist after the conflict.
TBF land mines that deactivate themself after a few weeks are a thing now as well.
I guess a market killbot field wouldn't be too much different during the conflict. It has the same indiscriminate nature for sure, though, and soft targets with no point defences like civilians will be extra vulnerable.
And now... they can fly
Headline is somewhat misleading, article is based off an admission from a Ukrainian military officer about a test that happened two years ago.
The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war.
Even setting aside any apocalyptic scenarios, this is bad. You used to have to look your enemy in the eyes and stab them. Then you just had to see them from afar and shoot them. Now you don't have to acknowledge them at all.
Most of the casualties were from bombers for a long time already, this is that but one step removed.
It's bad for a different reason, you in this case don't exist anymore. We used to have people killing people, now there are autonomous robots doing this, and that's a new, completely different class of warfare.
The scariest thing is, autonomous "soldiers" can do what bombers cannot: Go building-to-building and door-to-door.
The cost and risk of urban engagements and "boots on the ground" was usually the final commitment of warfare.
Military training exists to brainwash decent human beings with a sense of morality and critical thinking abilities, who know they mustn't kill and would refuse requests to kill, into killing machines who are proud to follow orders (and then experience PTSD when they're returned to civilian life and realize what they've done).
Therefore, I contend that fully autonomous drones have killed human beings since wars have been a thing, and those drones are called "soldiers".
Fun and interesting take, as far as commentary on soldiers.
These new fully autonomous drones though, are able to be mass produced by Capital. That's the important difference. It means that there is a nascent way, to bypass the need to have a country with high births to fuel a war machine, and you can just more easily Capital your way to domination.
And that's kinda scary.
I can barely see you up there on that high horse.
Hasn't anyone seen Screamers (1995)? Or read Second Variety?
I'm glad they, allegedly, stopped after the one test. This sounds an awful lot like a war crime on Ukraine's part. Enemy combatants (especially since we know most of Russia's army are being trafficked) need the opportunity to surrender peacefully.
Pretty sure it's not a war crime yet. Damn sure it should be. Human in the loop. Update Geneva conventions.
Indiscriminate killing is a war crime, and they have just admitted to it.
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