[infurl]

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/lethal-autonomous-weapons-exist-they-must-be-banned

A chilling future that some had said might not arrive for many years to come is, in fact, already here. According to a recent UN report, a drone airstrike in Libya from the spring of 2020—made against Libyan National Army forces by Turkish-made STM Kargu-2 drones on behalf of Libya’s Government of National Accord—was conducted by weapons systems with no known humans “in the loop.”

I first encountered stories about this a few weeks ago and posted a link to an article as an aside in another thread. However it looks like things are getting serious. This is an opinion piece by a group of well known artificial intelligence researchers.

The push for artificial intelligence is starting to remind me of the Manhattan Project.

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

[HS]

Most countries will probably feel obligated to develop this type of technology in secret, just because other countries might be as well. It seems a similar gamble to gain of function research on microbes. The logic might be a little twisty, but maybe this is the best way forward, all things considered.

I will say, the film clearly has good intentions behind it, and I agree about the dangers, but I can't help being reminded of Thomas Edison's demonstration with the elephant. This is always my hope, but perhaps fear is preventing us from thinking in the direction of potentially beneficial uses for a new technology.

There seem to be two kinds of ''interesting times'' we might find ourselves in. I think if we just do our best to steer the ship of collective progress, instead of attempting to bring it to a full stop, we'll have a better chance of making it to the good variety.

[yotamarker]

OooWeee !

they didn't mention how it was weaponized tho.
self destruct ? gun ? poison dart ?

and how far from the target was it deployed ?
this may lead to countries settling their differences with bot battles.

[MagnusWootton]

I spose any piece of junk whatsoever you can strap a gun to (which also pretty much just is a piece of junk.),  its actually not impressive at all, the ai these cruddy sentries they give, compared to real a.i. is not very advanced at all, its always been true.   

If it had an invisibility cloak,  could shoot bullets out of the air, nanosecond reflexes, and amazing offroad potential,  plus it can fly, and have infinite power source,  develop its own combat tactics, jump bazooka missiles and there is billions of them.   then id be more impressed.  But somehow,  Id still not be that worried about it...

I think theres something more powerful at play, stopping any army from taking over being a possibility.

[yotamarker]

[MagnusWootton]

Ive got 4 more things to my horrible "future soldier"   it can reproduce itself as well on the battlefield,  and it also can repair other robots on the battleground in fast forwards, and its 100% recyclable, and it has a cycle time for a new robot being under 15 seconds.

But... thank god no-one is smart enough to work out how that could work!   Now that could be a clue why you get such crap grades at school, and u'r wondering why.