Boeing's Autonomous Fighter Jet Could Arrive Next Year (engadget.com)

Slashdot reader technology_dude writes in response to an Engadget report about Boeing's plans to develop an autonomous fighter jet: In Season 1, Episode 23 of Star Trek, the Enterprise visits two worlds that are at continuous war. The war is ran via computers, and people that are victims in a "hit" report to a facility to be terminated. Kirk tells the world's leaders that there can be no peace if there is no cost to the war. We avoid war because of its cost and ugliness. Remove that and you remove the reason to stop. It looks like we may need the Captain to intervene here on planet earth. We seem hellbent on automating our militaries. The report says Boeing's recently unveiled autonomous fighter jet, called the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, is expected to arrive as soon as 2020. "The aircraft is designed to fly alongside crewed jets during combat, performing early warning tests, intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance," reports Engadget. The company says the jets will cost a "fraction" of a manned fighter.

Comments

SkyNet

[macraig]

So SkyNet's air force arrives before SkyNet proper....

Re:Yay fiction

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The only less realistic sci-fi trope is inventing indefinite life extension tech, and "wise leaders don't let anybody use it becuz 2 many peepul" and the voting pop is fine with that.

Yeah, that's not what we need to worry about

[rsilvergun]

There was a cost to the war. The people were killed. It was kind of a naff plot.

What we need to worry about is a future where the rich and powerful don't need us. Where virtually everything is done by a small number of machines and a tiny engineering class who serve the ruling class, much like the merchant class served the aristocracy of old in the Dark Ages.

Right now the rich need us to buy their stuff and they need to balance military and civilian life. Once they've got automated kill bots, custom life extension treatments and robots to make their baubles we're all pretty much worthless to them. History has not been kind to people who aren't needed for anything in particular...

Re:Not quite

[angel'o'sphere]

The curse of the last century and probably still going on into ours is simple:
Weapon technology evolved faster than any human mind can comprehend, or any human ethics evolved with same speed. The previous Iraq war killed probably 5 million people. But it is downplayed as surgery strikes. And the aftermath probably is about to kill 20 million due to the ISIS crisis which no one dares to tackle.

For reference: WWII is considered to have killed 50 million. Bombing Iraq back into the "middle ages" and having ISIS running mad in that area is already approaching 50% of that death toll.