Technology

Because they're not good people.

I think we try to analyze stuff and always give benefit of doubt because life's weird but some people are just bad - Occam's razor and everything.

I recently watched a great video on how drug dealers who deal Tranq justify selling dangerous drugs (by Channel 5 on yt) and the host had a great monolog on how many of these people create these fake realities to justify that "their just a cog in the machine" and have no choice and obviously this is a spectrum of sorts. But this mega rich cunt has all of the choices. Literally. So, it's evil. No excuse.

There are company lines/slogans and then there are company action.

First one comes from PR and second is dictated by cold hard cash. Guess which one bends if there is a conflict?

Don't be evil to shareholders

Yeah. That’s exactly what a cruise missile is and has been for decades.

Yes, but ones that his company makes and he gets to profit from. It is the classic "tech bro" play. Come to market with some overly complex solution to a problem that has been solved to most peoples satisfaction for decades, claim you are disrupting a stale market that is not meeting the needs of the consumer, ignore any and all existing rules and regulations so you can undercut the existing competition, then bitch when those rules and regulations catch up after you have driven out the existing competition and made obscene profits.

Ummm....you not been looking at what's happening in Ukraine? There may not be AI involved (not yet anyway), but UAV munitions are now the way of combat now.

I pity the foot soldiers even more now. War is hell. War with drones strapped with high explosives chasing you down is hell on another level.

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oh my, that's troubling.

The headline is kinda burying the lede. You're absolutely right that "kamikaze drones" already exist. Others have rather glibly pointed out that cruise missiles that have existed for decades are essentially this, and more recently there have been a great many "loitering munitions" drones which are what this startup is talking about.

The thing that seems to be novel here is that they are intending to make them fully automated, with AI-driven target acquisition, and capable of operating in a zero-comms environment. Currently drones generally still need a human at the controls.

The idea of what amounts to the equivalent of Tesla's "Full Self Driving" tech being in charge of deciding who lives and dies and what should be reduced to a smouldering crater is, it has to be said, faintly unnerving.

That’s an interesting thought. At first I was wondering what would distinguish them from standard anti-aircraft systems, and then it clicked.

They’d have to be fast - at least with the ability to put on a burst of speed significantly higher than that of the target drone. Making it have an explosive increases the damage and potentially area of effect, but if you think about it like the kinetic kill vehicles designed to take out ICBMs, I think you can just whack the target drone hard enough to knock it out while potentially increasing speed, decreasing weight, and decreasing costs.

I find ground-based systems more effective as a defensive measure, tho. No limit on weight, no added energy consumption just to be ready to react. I think germans showcased some autocannon like that. It's easier to spot and destroy, but also easier to maintain a drone-less perimeter.

On the other hand, flying antidrone fleet can be an offensive weapon. Everyone watches the front from the sky nowadays, so quickly pulling their eyes off before pushing forward can be a lifesaver.

What stops your fleet from destroying it's own?

Interesting. What about helicopters and what not?