776
The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
776 points (96.7% liked)
Technology
59347 readers
4823 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As an important note in this discussion, we already have weapons that autonomously decide to kill humans. Mines.
Imagine a mine that could move around, target seek, refuel, rearm, and kill hundreds of people without human intervention. Comparing an autonomous murder machine to a mine is like comparing a flint lock pistol to the fucking gattling cannon in an a10.
Well, an important point you and him. Both forget to mention is that mines are considered inhumane. Perhaps that means AI murdering should also be considered. Inhumane, and we should just not do it instead of allowing landmines.
This, jesus, we're still losing limbs and clearing mines from wars that were over decades ago.
An autonomous field of those is horror movie stuff.
Pretty sure the entire DOD got a collective boner reading this.
And NonCredibleDefense
For what it's worth, there's footage on youtube of drone swarm demonstrations that were posted 6 years ago. Considering that the military doesn't typically release footage of the cutting edge of its tech to the public, so this demonstration was likely for a product that was already going obsolete; and that the 6 years that have passed since have made lightning fast developments in things like facial recognition... at this point I'd be surprised if we weren't already at the very least field testing the murder machines you described.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
footage on youtube of drone swarm demonstrations
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Imagine a mine that could recognize "that's just a child/civilian/medic stepping on me, I'm going to save myself for an enemy soldier." Or a mine that could recognize "ah, CenCom just announced a ceasefire, I'm going to take a little nap." Or "the enemy soldier that just stepped on me is unarmed and frantically calling out that he's surrendered, I'll let this one go through. Not the barrier troops chasing him, though."
There's opportunities for good here.
Yes, those definitely sound like the sort of things military contractors consider.
Why waste a mine on the wrong target?
Why occupy a hospital?
Why encroach on others land?
Sorry... are you saying that's what Palestinians are doing?
I feel you’re being obtuse on purpose here, but no I’m saying that the other side of this conflict has been doing that.
Pretty sure you and @FlyingSquid are on the same side and making the same point but misunderstanding each other.
@FaceDeer okay so now that mines allegedly recognise these things they can be automatically deployed in cities.
Sure there's a 5% margin of error but that's an "acceptable" level of colateral according to their masters. And sure they are better at recognising some ethnicities than others but since those they discriminate against aren't a dominant part of the culture that peoduces them, nothing gets done about it.
And after 20 years when the tech is obsolete and they all start malfunctioning we're left with the same problems we have with current mines, only because the ban on mines was reversed the scale of the problem is much much worse than ever before.
Lmao are you 12?
They do have the mentality of one.
Maybe it starts that way but once that's accepted as a thing the result will be increased usage of mines. Where before there were too many civilians to consider using mines, now the soldiers say "it's smart now, it won't blow up children" and put down more and more in more dangerous situations. And maybe those mines only have a 0.1% failure rate in tested situations but a 10% failure rate over the course of decades. Usage increases 10 fold and then you quickly end up with a lot more dead kids.
Plus it won't just be mines, it'll be automated turrets when previously there were none or even more drone strikes with less oversight required because the automated system is supposed to prevent unintended casualties.
Availability drives usage.
That sounds great... Why don't we line the streets with them? Every entryway could scan for hostiles. Maybe even use them against criminals
What could possibly go wrong?