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Musk-Backed 'Slaughterbots' Video Will Warn the UN About Killer Microdrones (space.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Space.com:
A graphic new video posits a very scary future in which swarms of killer microdrones are dispatched to kill political activists and U.S. lawmakers. Armed with explosive charges, the palm-sized quadcopters use real-time data mining and artificial intelligence to find and kill their targets. The makers of the seven-minute film titled Slaughterbots are hoping the startling dramatization will draw attention to what they view as a looming crisis -- the development of lethal, autonomous weapons, that select and fire on human targets without human guidance.
The Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mitigating existential risks posed by advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, commissioned the film. Founded by a group of scientists and business leaders, the institute is backed by AI-skeptics Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, among others. The institute is also behind the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of non-governmental organizations which have banded together to call for a preemptive ban on lethal autonomous weapons... The film will be screened this week at the United Nations in Geneva during a meeting of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons... The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is hosting a series of meetings at this year's event to propose a worldwide ban on lethal autonomous weapons, which could potentially be developed as flying drones, self-driving tanks, or automated sentry guns.
"This short film is more than just speculation," says Stuart Russell, a U.C. Berkeley considered an expert in artificial intelligence.
"It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technologies we already have."
The Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mitigating existential risks posed by advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, commissioned the film. Founded by a group of scientists and business leaders, the institute is backed by AI-skeptics Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, among others. The institute is also behind the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of non-governmental organizations which have banded together to call for a preemptive ban on lethal autonomous weapons... The film will be screened this week at the United Nations in Geneva during a meeting of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons... The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is hosting a series of meetings at this year's event to propose a worldwide ban on lethal autonomous weapons, which could potentially be developed as flying drones, self-driving tanks, or automated sentry guns.
"This short film is more than just speculation," says Stuart Russell, a U.C. Berkeley considered an expert in artificial intelligence.
"It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technologies we already have."
Forget artillery strikes. What's really gonna stir shit up is when drone attacks allow for anonymous murder. What society could cope with that? It's gonna be like handing a Death Note to every citizen on Earth, only you won't need to know their name. I COULD see a ban on murder-drones actually working though, as after the first time a crime family gets whacked, the black market won't touch them; people will go after individual sellers as well. Wearing a mask in public might become the norm... until voice-recognition is used instead.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
>> Armed with explosive charges, the palm-sized quadcopters use real-time data mining and artificial intelligence to find and kill their targets.
>> If you can attach a camera to a drone, you can attach a bomb
The cameras used to hobby drones typically weigh 20-100grams. In the US, Fourth of July fireworks sold to the public can weigh 1,000 grams (with 500 grams of explosive inside). So the camera could be replaced with a small firework, which would make the target curious about that popping noise.
1,000 Kg is a decent bomb (1 million grams, or 10,000 times as much as a drone camera).
$500-$1000 quads CAN carry a bit more weight, but at a major reduction in flight time and range, as well as speed and the ability to fly in a stiff breeze. Unladen, a DJI Phantom 3 Professional ($700) can fly for about 23 minutes. Add a 1Kg payload and flight time is less than half that much. At 6MPH it could cover about 1 mile, if there is no breeze at all. With a 5MPH breeze against it, and carrying a 1Kg load would cover a several hundred feet before the battery died.
You're probably better off just throwing the pipe bomb with your hand. Much simpler. If you must go "fancy", a potato gun (plumbing pipe and hairspray) will go just about as far with a 1Kg grenade.
We toss bullets, actually complete cartridges in the campfire. They make a fun popping noise when they cook off. A bullet is a ball of lead. A cartridge is a bullet combined with gunpowder, a casing, and a primer, for loading into a gun. A gun makes a bullet go fast, and weighs about ten pounds. (Handguns are only effective out to about 20 feet, and even then two or three shots probably won't kill the bad guy.)
The important bit of the system is the part which aims the gun at a vital part of the target's body and fires at the proper instant. That part is called the marksman. It weighs about 180 pounds.
If the US went to war with China our only hope would be nuclear war. There are simply so many Chinese that we would be dwarfed by their numbers. The US would have no good choice other than robotic warfare. Therefore I want my bots to be stronger, meaner and more in numbers as well as quantities to prevent a really horrific war. There are also huge monetary concerns. What does it cost for one prison guard? Lethal bots that prevented escapes would save us a king's ransom. Your local convenience store and gas station might also be a lot better off if robbers had no chance at all of pulling stick ups without bots taking them out. We could also gain control of our streets making crime next to impossible so that civilians could walk at any hour of day or night without fear. Also mass shootings might be eliminated as drones would be all over a gunman when he acted out. We might also learn quite a bit. These days when we pass laws and supposedly try to prevent certain situations we really don't want to control those crimes. As an example hookers know to work the expensive hotels as they rarely get arrested in expensive locations. But if they try to work in cheap motels the cops will be all over them. The truth is that the expensive hotels do more business if they have some good looking girls available and the richer folk who haunt these hotels want to be able to hire girls when they get the urge. Since drones could be used to track hookers and summon management you can bet that you won't see that in the expensive hotels. Gated communities act the same way. Some escorts will only go to gated communities as the cops simply do not interfere behind those gates. Our system accommodates certain crimes for certain people.
The worst thing about the drones is that even if they are only used by state actors with legitimate targets in mind, they still won't be 100% accurate.
Errors in facial recognition will happen, or criteria will be set too broadly to ensure the target gets hit - but that well targeted killbot could just as easily get the wrong guy, which would be chalked up to "acceptable collateral damage".
If its so hard to get OCR to be more than about 98% accurate, when its analysing a high resolution scan of stationary text under nice lighting conditions, what are the chances we can get a face scanner to be 100% accurate and never get false positives when the target is running like hell and ducking under stuff? You can be sure that the bots will just be programmed to go for the strike when they get better than a 70% match, or something like that.
I have no doubt these can and will be made, but they will never have the surgical strike capability that they will be marketed as having - they will be much more indiscriminate.
Obama was only doing what Charles Windsor ordered him todo.
You donâ(TM)t say no to the British monarchy and live very long.
Especially now they have these drones.