We are SO over due for revolution.
Russia or Ukraine?
Butlerian Jihad when?
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
But why the 51st 🤔
Spoiler
Silo TV show/books
IIRC the additional one was to control the rest
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.
You can, to some extent, avoid an undiscriminating minefield. You can, to some extent, plead for mercy from the jack boot kicking in your door. You cannot avoid or plead with a mine flying through your bedroom window.
You can’t plead with a missile either. Nor a camouflaged IED.
I’m not saying it’s morale. It’s not.
I’m just saying this isn’t a case of “an artificial intelligence pulling the trigger.” It is not “fully autonomous” kill in the way the headline insinuates. This is a toaster preprogrammed to explode, autonomously.
In fact, I’d argue it’s a dangerous characterization, as it removes some culpability from whoever setup the kill drone, like the equipment made a decision. The equipment did not make the decision, its operator did.
I fail to see your point. Yes weapons kill people. But no weapon in history could
- be cheaply dispersed over populated areas
- linger for hours or potentially days
- patrol and chase targets into any kind of cover
- instantly and autonomously take offensive action outside of any chain of command
Did you read the article? The equipment does make the decision. That’s the whole point. One remote operator vibe-killing scores of people extremely efficiently. Yes there’s a human deciding to put the drones in flight but why would that remove culpability any more than collateral damage from a traditional explosive?
By your logic, nukes exist so there’s no reason to worry about any other types of war crime.
That’s what I’m trying to reiterate. I’m not saying we shouldn’t worry about it. This is horrific.
But it’s not Terminator. It’s further extended drone warfare.
There’s a very important distinction between this, and some kind of cognizant machine that starts in a relatively neutral state and decides to kill certain targets, like (say) the corpo robots one often sees in cyberpunk fiction.
I see a lot of correlation between fictional war bots, tech bro “AI,” and this kind of drone warfare, and they are all completely unrelated. The most sophisticated thing going on here is a CV guidance system dumber than many missiles, and I just don’t want to muddy the waters with any kind of assertion that these weapons have any sapience, that we’ve “offloaded” the decision to kill. It’s just a very immoral weapon, indeed very detached from deployment.
2 years ago 🙄
dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.dontthinkaboutit.
you roll your eyes while most others are sweating profusely
Militaries are famously secretive.
The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war.
Yeah, let’s hope we don’t make a habit out of this. Landmines are already bad enough.
Instead of stepping in the wrong place, someone runs an antivirus on an old system in eleven years and accidentally triggers a murder bot to fly out and pop some music teacher walking their dog
Thing is that both are currently being used it droves in Ukraine. About anything bar chemical or nuclear has.
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 over the next century or two.
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.
Weapons have been banned before, but nukes are the only things that actually don’t get used.
Well, you don’t hear a lot about blinding weapons or biological agents these days.
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.
That’s a great example. You know what happened after muskets fully took over? The age of absolutism gave way to the age of revolution.
Like, both drones and muskets are real, game-changing innovation, but how they effect the geopolitical equilibrium is a complicated question. I’m reminded of some of the WWI-era designers who though a more deadly weapon would mean a shorter, more humane war. In practice it meant a very different, long-standoff battlefield, and a much slower war.
To that point:
These are cheaper to create, easier to run in undetected, and do far far less collateral damage.
Shells are really cheap, like as cheap or cheaper than a drone, undetectability is valid, but actually favours the little guy, and collateral damage depends. Some shrapnel marks on one hand vs. a localised explosion on the other. You don’t want to shell a big thin-walled tank or pipe, but on a normal building the drone may actually be more destructive.
So basically, this is an interesting development and different from a shell for sure, nobody’s denying that. But, that it favours central, autocratic power does not directly follow.
You are an incredibly optimistic summer child.
you don’t hear a lot about blinding weapons or biological agents
Blinding agents aren’t that effective in warfare. Chemical agents do get used, especially on civilians. Biological weapons are a big risk relative to much more tested, targeted, conventional munitions. At the end of the day, flying an explosion at the other guy has always been the winning strategy, and still is to some extent.
The age of absolutism gave way to the age of revolution.
Ah yes, when you could drop off a few boxes of guns to some revolutionaries and they would be near untrackable in dense urban or wide rural settings.
Now, your revolutionary drone operator saves you the trouble of tracking by broadcasting his location, assuming he hasn’t already been sighted on your universal surveillance cameras or been swept up by irregular purchasing habits.
Shells are really cheap…
By dollars per kill, drones blow them out of the water. You need a big, pricey, vulnerable piece of machinery to target your shells. Your target will more than likely move or take a covered position once the shells drop. And obviously you need a spotting system for this as well (probably a drone anyway).
On average, for your light artillery it might take 8-10 shells to kill a target. That’s why they’re not precision killing equipment and are better used for flattening defenses or pinning down groups of people.
A drone just needs some piloting, human or otherwise. So you’re comparing 10 shells from a trained team out of specialized firing position with a calibrated gun vs. one guy with two drones in a backpack.
So when you stack up any belligerents [state vs state/non-state], the key math is who can deploy more drones from better positions with better range/targeting, better tactical intelligence and keep pressure over a longer period. A state actor will always have the advantage there.
The problem with land mines is that they exist after the conflict.
And now… they can fly
They can turn them off though right?
Right?!
Easier to spot than one underground.
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.
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.
are able to be mass produced by Capital
So are soldiers, to be fair.
Luckily we don’t live in a world yet where capital can make those drones without labor. Until we do they will still need the populace as a whole.
I can barely see you up there on that high horse.
No, the psychological training to get people to kill each other without thinking is new. Before the 1960’s it was common for soldiers to purposely miss. The desensitising and psychological training of shooting at human targets without thinking changed modern warfare and turned people into killing machines.
This is why I stopped playing ARC. Felt like it was just conditioning to prefer shooting-on-sight than being friendly. That or being a sociopath and lying and shooting someone in the back.
Neither of which are properties I like to even play pretend having.
You’re very correct in your comment, btw. Nowadays US uses methods that condition people so well that the shoot-to-kill amount of soldiers is like ~95%. In WWII (and everything preceding it) it was roughly 2% of men who were quite literally psychopaths (not in the criminal sense, but a sense of being able to turn off their empathy, many surgeons and ceos belong to this group of ppl). Only <25% of soldiers in a position to fire at the enemy actually shot at them. About 1% of US fighter pilots accounted for ~50% their kills.
Lindybeige has what I think is a fairly good video on the subject.
Nope these make the choices. Ai driven 99.999%
When deployed, the drone is launched into a designated hunt-zone. It navigates purely via visual landmarks. The onboard AI constantly screens the video feed. When an object matches its classification matrix (e.g., a specific mobile missile launcher), the system locks onto the pixel coordinate, arms the ESAD, and executes a terminal dive completely independent of human input.
This tightly integrated anatomy of Edge Compute + Computer Vision + Modular Lethality is what defines the reality of autonomous robotic warfare today.
That’s what they’re saying:
When deployed, the soldier is launched into a designated hunt-zone. He navigates purely via visual landmarks. His brain constantly screens the nerve data from his eyes. When an object matches its classification matrix (e.g., a specific mobile missile launcher), the organism locks onto the pixel coordinate, arms the ESAD, and executes a terminal dive completely dependent on human input.
I don’t understand are you agreeing with me or quoting me because that’s not from the article, that’s from my Ai prompt that I run through gemini and then ask questions.
You didn’t understand that they took your comment and applied it to a human instead of a computerized drone?
I mean, they used AI to generate their last comment. If there were ever a good example of AI eroding the capability for thought…
Instead of letting the large language model think for you, I would suggest to try critical thinking for yourself. I sincerely mean this in a kind way, because if you continue with this, you may become a drone like the ones we talk about here, and I wish that on nobody. I know this current path is easier/more convenient, but sometimes one has to choose the harder path to arrive at a better result.
I don’t let things think for me I made the prompt that it had to run off of. It wasn’t I asked it the anatomy and it gave me that. I had to trick it.
Lol. Okay buddy
Ask it: the anatomy of a terminator drone, the ones we use in Ukraine not the movie.
You won’t get what I got.
You didn’t understand that they took your comment and applied it to a human instead of a computerized drone?
Headline is somewhat misleading, article is based off an admission from a Ukrainian military officer about a test that happened two years ago.
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.
Even before bombers existed for every person killed on a battlefield a ton of people who didn’t see a single enemy soldier died because that army had destroyed or used up the region’s food supplies or introduced a new disease or diverted a river’s water.
Yeah, and also, many political leaders just say, “kill your enemies,” and the deed gets done nowadays. I’m pretty sure that’s been the case for a long time too.
Exactly
Hasn’t anyone seen Screamers (1995)? Or read Second Variety?
7 years, only becoming more plausible.
I ❤️ Dick
Hello, fellow Dickhead! Autonomous weapons working beyond their creators is a constant recurring theme, even features in one of his first few short stories: The Gun by PKD in 1952.
Ty!
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.
As if having a human in the loop would make slaughtering people more humanitarian. How many reports have we read of soldiers from any power perpetrating horrendous acts on enemy combatants, or worse, civilians?
I agree that murder without prejudice should be curtailed if at all possible and that autonomous robots are not likely to accept surrender, but it’s not like human agressors are always open to it either.
Not saying it’s good, or humanitarian. War crimes don’t stop war (much as I would prefer it all to be called murder rather than state sanctioned violence). The Geneva accords create a bottom level of godawful that is unacceptable that the various militaries agree on. Hopefully it helps protects civilians and soldiers both. AI weapons are a plausible existential threat, they should be treated as such, also, importantly, they are also a vector for plausible deniability.
‘Humans in the loop’ could also provide a level of friction that might make atrocities less common as the commanders cover their asses by putting responsibility on those lower down in the hierarchy, who might choose not to. The only reason nuclear war didn’t happen in the 60s was one person saying NO
Of course, the US is (likely) currently bombing civilian water supplies, so we need to drag ourselves back up to basic humanity (and yes, humanity is anything but basic as history attends).
the US is (likely) currently bombing civilian water supplies,
This needs to be addressed criminally later.
Hague invasion act
One can hope.
I think that’s really what it all comes down to, is the lack of surrender by a system that could eventually be able to make choices on the fly. You’re right though, in the end it’s not more humanitarian by any means. I suppose it removes a little bit of the sting and I guess If you’re able to pull off the mental gymnastics of being able to convince yourself that a computer program taking out a bunch of people in one go is less of a burden to carry on the conscious but I bet it’s a lot to carry for those that have to program and command the actions to happen and for the ones that actually have to engage with those systems.
Indiscriminate killing is a war crime, and they have just admitted to it.
If you send an indiscriminate killing machine into an area with only enemy combatants, it’s not exactly that indiscriminate. Worst case scenario it fails to detonate and becomes a hazard on the ground, but Ukraine is already saturated with landmines.
Sweet summer child, no they did not stop. And these things move fast and attack fast, just like missiles; there’s no time for surrender.
Sweet summer child
It’s been years, no one watches that anymore.
maybe simply this didn’t work well enough for it to be worth the effort. there were already surrenders to drones (rare) there’s no reason why automated drone couldn’t do it as well
No, there’s been advances in the program since its inception. They’re still in use.
Slaughterbots - If human: kill() explores the consequences of this.
It seems intriguing but is this channel legit or just a spooky clickbait kinda thing? The thumbnails didn’t inspire much confidence but also, I know it’s YouTube and you gotta play the game. (eyeroll)
I’ve never heard of this org before though.
slaughterbots was a concept video about a dark future of small drone assasins that hold basically one bullet and would look to land on teh victims forhead and fire it. It scary as heck because it is so achievable to do with technology over a decade a go and just more achievable today.
No video? They did not know what the Ai chose until it sent a manned vehicle to check it out. That’s extraordinarily concerning.
I suppose that’s the point of it - no comms at all so can’t be jammed.
In the current landscape of military technology, what the public conceptually calls “terminator drones” refers to Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), One-Way Attack (OWA) uncrewed aerial systems, and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
Because modern electronic warfare (EW) can instantly sever radio control and jam GPS, these systems cannot rely on a human pilot or cloud computing. They are designed as self-contained, edge-computing robotic hunters.
The physical and technological anatomy of a modern autonomous combat drone is categorized into five core systems:
1. The Neural Architecture (Edge AI Compute Core)
The “brain” is no longer a simple autopilot board; it is an onboard AI accelerator optimized for computer vision and localized decision-making.
- The System-on-Chip (SoC): Military-grade edge AI processors (such as ruggedized variants of the Nvidia Jetson Orin series or custom ASICs) capable of executing hundreds of Trillions of Operations Per Second (TOPS).
- The Local Model Stack: Instead of connecting to an external server, the drone carries local, highly compressed convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These models are trained on massive synthetic datasets to immediately recognize, classify, and track military hardware (tanks, radar dishes, infantry) even when camouflaged or partially obscured.
2. The Sensor Suite (The Perception Layer)
To operate in “denied environments” where GPS is jammed, the drone relies on a fused sensory array to build an internal map of the world.
- Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Gimbals: High-resolution thermal and visual cameras that feed raw video directly into the AI computer vision core.
- Optical Flow & Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO): Downward-facing cameras that track the movement of the ground pixel-by-pixel. Combined with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), VIO allows the drone to navigate with pinpoint accuracy by “looking” at the terrain, rendering GPS entirely unnecessary.
- Solid-State LiDAR / Micro-Radar: Used for low-altitude obstacle avoidance and capturing the 3D geometry of a target during the terminal attack phase.
3. The EW-Resistant Communications & Swarm Mesh
When drones operate collectively, they utilize decentralized mesh networking.
- Software-Defined Radios (SDR): Radios that dynamically hop across thousands of frequencies per second to evade electronic jamming.
- Inter-Drone Mesh Networking: The drones communicate directly with each other rather than a ground station. If Drone-A detects an air defense system, it instantly updates the target coordinates across the entire swarm mesh. If Drone-A is destroyed, the remaining swarm automatically re-allocates mission roles dynamically.
4. Modular Airframe & Propulsion
Modern mass-production initiatives (like the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program) prioritize cost-effective, modular structures over exquisite, expensive aerospace frames.
- Materials: Carbon fiber composites or high-density 3D-printed polymers designed for rapid assembly.
- Propulsion: High-KV brushless electric motors powered by solid-state or high-capacity Lithium-Polymer (LiPo) batteries for small, tactical, low-signature loitering. Larger variants utilize small gas turbines or hybrid-rotary engines for extended range.
- Signatures: The geometry is explicitly shaped to minimize both Radar Cross-Section (RCS) and acoustic signatures, allowing them to approach targets completely undetected until the final seconds.
5. The Integrated Kinetic Payload (The Warhead)
Modern military philosophy dictates that an attack drone is not just a vehicle carrying a bomb—the drone is the weapon. New architectures utilize highly specialized, plug-and-play modular payloads (such as the Terminus or Common UAS Payload designs).
- Electronic Safe and Arm Devices (ESAD): Microprocessor-controlled safety systems that keep the warhead completely inert until the onboard AI confirms a positive target lock and enters the terminal dive.
- Directional Frag/Shaped Charges: Optimized to direct the explosive energy entirely forward into the target upon impact, maximizing lethality while minimizing the structural weight the drone has to carry.
The Functional Workflow (The Autonomy Loop)
[ Launch ] ➔ [ Visual Navigation (No GPS) ] ➔ [ Onboard AI Target Detection ] │ [ Terminal Engagement ] 🗲 [ Local Target Classification & Tracking ] ◄────┘When deployed, the drone is launched into a designated hunt-zone. It navigates purely via visual landmarks. The onboard AI constantly screens the video feed. When an object matches its classification matrix (e.g., a specific mobile missile launcher), the system locks onto the pixel coordinate, arms the ESAD, and executes a terminal dive completely independent of human input.
This tightly integrated anatomy of Edge Compute + Computer Vision + Modular Lethality is what defines the reality of autonomous robotic warfare today.
Thanks, ChatGPT.
No it’s a custom Gemini prompt persona.
Stop spamming this slop.
Ok.
