Is it really more terrifying somehow than a guy with a machine gun going and mowing down civilians? Or a maniac in a truck plowing in pedestrians. In effect, the other approaches are a lot more accessible to anyone.

I'm pretty sure Slaughterbots was trying to provoke people into building DIY loitering munitions to prove the video wrong. The drones will be expensive, low in capability, can be intercepted (the video simply postulated that they can't be shot down by uh snipers?) and 99% of the time they will be controlled by humans. After all, being wrong on the internet is the best way to get a correct response.

I am honestly more scared of chemical weapons and barrel bombs. You know, things that have actually been confirmed to have devastating impact in Syria.

Somehow the typical hacker news commenter is worried about very precise robotic hit men operating in large groups to be used for indiscriminate killing when WW2 weapons were already enough to wipe out entire cities. You're more likely to have died from the atomic bombs deployed in Nagasaki or Hiroshima than from some tiny plastic drone with a 5 minute flight time.

I mean think about a hypothetical nuclear weapon that kills everyone recognized via facial recognition in a 10 kilometer radius. Most bystanders aren't important enough to have their face on that database.

As the quote from the league of legends series goes:

"Once it exists, a weapon will never be unmade, and it will be used."

Swarm of cheap drones blankets area. When an individual drone finds a target it requests an artillery strike (or similar) on its own location.

There's something about the swarming nature of these things that makes them even more unsettling.

They’re big enough to carry a blinding laser and a computer capable of face recognition.

Expect urban defence to feature a lot of nets in the near future.

A swam of tiny drones could easily overwhelm an enemy....

Lots of options. If against personel they just kamikaze in... if against armoured targets a small explosive charge on a hundred or so drones could easily destroy a target.

Do a Google search for drone propeller injuries. Those are accidental; now envision 20 of them working intentionally to slice you apart with the props.

They don’t really need armament to maim and kill.

Now all we need to do is tell the attackers they can't use the killing robots, problem solved.

Jesus Christ rhetoric like that is how you got to /r/2020PoliceBrutality

Unfortunately the same technology can be used to attack people. The world would maybe be a safer place if weapons technology hadn't evolved from sticks and stones.

I think this war shows how useful they are in urban combat, not a place where ballistic missile speeds and range are relevant. Small warhead would be a feature in close combat.

Guns/muskets weren't that useful initially either. But the potential was there. Bows and arrows proved to be more effective for 100+ years before guns eventually won out.

> So it's like using a laptop to hammer a nail.

No. It's like using a nail gun rather than a hammer.

> There are way more deadliest, simplest and reliable solutions, unfortunately.

But none with the potential of drones and swarms. Cheap, easy to replace units that could fly, provide recoissance along with offensive/defensive capabilities. And it's just the beginning.

I suspect most armies, law enforcement, private mercenaries, mall cops, etc will be using drones in the future.

> Watching the current war, I think those drones are not that useful

I'm going to copy an analogy I saw elsewhere: what we're seeing now is the equivalent of how planes were used in WWI; slow, not very effective, with limited range and roles. By the time WWII came around, there was technological and strategic improvements leading to to high-alt bombers, fighter escorts, dive bombers and jet engines. Nothing a WWI pilot would recognize. Drones will likely evolve in ways that would make their current use seem quaint.

Seems like it should be read both ways as both are inevitable with the tech.

Prior to the invention of reliable, accurate firearms, for much of history a relatively small number of dedicated warriors (e.g. armored knights on warhorses, samurai, cavalry, archers, etc) could dominate a much larger population of commoners (and conscript them into lesser forces such as infantry to increase their strength). To a degree, heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery, and armored helicopters allow dictators to exercise control over their people by employing a moderate sized army. Anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles appear to have cut into this advantage, but you still need pretty serious support from state actors to acquire those.

Different technological innovations in warfare have sometimes been leveling (eg guns as “the great equalizer”, anti-tank missiles) and sometimes had the opposite effect (e.g. attack helicopters and fighter jets). It does seem plausible that robotic weapons will favor those with vast resources, even when they lack manpower. It’s not impossible that it could go the other way, though. Actually, I can see drones going both ways.

Isn’t the situation in Russia right now an example of a single individual dominating millions? And all back through history from the advent of armies, isn’t it the same thing?

> Many of us create technology as if our democracies are built forever. And they are — until they are not.

I agree 100%, this is why we need more people working on getting 3D printing and other fabrication techniques into the hands of as many people as we can. The right to bear arms holds no water in the US as the DoD so massively outweighs any possible resistance the populace could offer; the only way to safeguard our democracies is to bring the scales back to level.

The trouble is, there are undemocratic societies where this is being built as well. This drone swarm is actually from China. The reasons why we build these systems is to prevent the undemocratic societies gaining power over us. The threat of our own societies becoming undemocratic doesn't feel as pressing as the threat of undemocratic societies that exist today.

The atomic bomb is a good example, a lot of the scientist working on it wouldn't have if there weren't fears that Nazi Germany was going to build it first.

This also reminds of the prisoners dilemma. If both parties choose not to build these systems we would be all fine, if one builds it and the others doesn't the other is screwed. If both build it they are both screwed but not as much.

We are building ever more precise weapons with less and less collateral damage and you are worried about evil people using the precise ones?

It sounds like you are making the argument that collateral damage will make people more likely to rebel against an authoritarian regimes. Is that actually true?

democrazy and free will / human rights is already dead when they vaccine mandated us to carry on with our lives. or else.

Vernor Vinge's work is amazing. In the story "A fire upon the deep" he introduces the most amazing concepts, and there's a realistic way that an AI reboots itself after being in cold storage, there's a Usenet communication between civilizations, and the most impressive was an idea that there's regions in the universe where the speed of light is faster and brains work at a higher rate. It's an amazing work. Later he comes up with the prescient "focus factor" in the sequel.

Art imitates nature. All ideas are remixes of previous ideas, and ideas are ultimately rooted in observations from nature. A human mind in a vacuum wouldn’t be able to create anything.

Agree, aerial vehicles are slightly better than maritime vehicles in this sense. I left maritime robotics because I couldn’t find any decent paying job that is not defense related :( What we can do as a student team is to open-source it.

If the drones have lasers that are powerful and accurate enough[1], they can be very useful against ICBMs on a ballistic trajectory.

1. The navy is already testing ground-based lasers powerful enough to destroy drones and light aircraft.

What, the Nissan car?

Name a country that develops high tech weaponry and doesn't do one of the two:

- Use it for evil purposes

- Sell it to other nations that then use it for evil purposes

Anyone involved in the defence industry is complicit in the death of innocents, your third option is a fallacy.