A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties
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.
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.
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.
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.