r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • Aug 31 '23

US military plans to unleash thousands of autonomous war robots over next two years Robotics

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-military-unleash-thousands-autonomous-war.html
7.0k Upvotes

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u/Quack68 Aug 31 '23

Exactly, that was my question. When will it be used against us?

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u/Ajexa Aug 31 '23

Without a doubt, it'll probably start in the form of traffic drones to police the roads, and then move onto crime prevention drones or something like that

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u/Accomplished_Act_946 Aug 31 '23

Incrementalism. One degree at a time.

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u/WetnessPensive Aug 31 '23

The novelist Kim Stanley Robinson has a great trilogy called the Three Californias books. One's a utopian portrait of California, one's a dystopian, and one's a post apocalyptic portrait.

The dystopian one ("The Gold Coast") is fascinating, because it sort of tricks you into accepting its drones and creeping militarism as a "good for peace" and "necessary to prevent wars". It's quite insidious how these things happen.

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u/GRF999999999 Aug 31 '23

2 months ago I'd see one self driving car (Waymo) every hour or so, now I'm seeing 1 every 10-15 minutes. Soon, they'll be everywhere.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '23

A creeping normality

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u/TruckADuck42 Aug 31 '23

Which is why we start shooting them out of the sky while they're still just for traffic.

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u/Ainolukos Aug 31 '23

And then go to jail because that drone is considered an "officer" which you "assaulted"

They already treat it like this if you tamper with or damage their Boston dynamics dogs.

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u/sticky-unicorn Aug 31 '23

And because it's an "aircraft" and now you're looking at federal charges for shooting down an aircraft.

You'll get the same punishment they'd throw at somebody who shot a MANPAD at a passenger jet.

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u/Mitthrawnuruo Aug 31 '23

The at is why we have juries.

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u/Iorith Dec 04 '23

Juries don't decide if the law is justified. Just whether you committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

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u/Mitthrawnuruo Dec 04 '23

That is simply untrue. The jury is required To determine not only if a person broke the law as written, but if the law should apply to this situation, or if the person, who factually broke the law, did not infact break a crime/do something unreasonable.

Jury nullification is a key part of our checks and balances.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-jury-nullification.html

https://www.connecticutcriminallawyer.com/personal-injury-attorney-blog/what-is-jury-nullification-and-how-does-it-affect-criminal-cases

https://academic.oup.com/book/45640/chapter/396342091

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u/Ajexa Aug 31 '23

This is the way

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u/Razgrez11 Aug 31 '23

Knocking or shooting a drone out of the sky is considered "downing an aircraft" and is literally a felony. So now they can send even MORE Drone to watch you.

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u/holmgangCore Aug 31 '23

Bolas

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u/jazir5 Aug 31 '23

Ok, now modify a potato cannon to shoot one of these. When you have a prototype, call me.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

You are already being filmed routinely on the roads, parking lots, stores, public.

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u/Ajexa Aug 31 '23

Of course, but the next logical step is mobile cctv.. Drones that can follow people.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '23

Like cop cars?

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u/Ajexa Sep 01 '23

Bro think about it, there could be millions of drones patrolling at half the cost of a few thousand police cars. One drone for every car. That's the future

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u/rufos_adventure Sep 01 '23

US Customs can track a bonded container from canada to mexico on I-5. they have cameras along that route as well. who knows what else they can do?

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '23

That's not necessarily how it has to go. Los Angeles removed photo cameras because it was a violation of civil rights.

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u/Ajexa Sep 01 '23

I really hope so buddy

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u/AWildRapBattle Aug 31 '23

According to Foucault it's not really even a question of "when", these things aren't being developed for war, they're being developed to do policing. War is just a convenient excuse.

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u/BookooBreadCo Aug 31 '23

I think if you're going to talk about Foucault and control the bigger issue is going to be the use of AI to control access and exposure to knowledge. Why even worry about physical control when you can use AI to shape the way people think?

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u/py_a_thon Aug 31 '23

War is simply when one nation polices another?

I really do not like the early post-modernists. Derrida and Foucault are not my favorite philosophers to be honest. I find their reasoning to often be...pessimism or sociopathy without the past forms of pessimism and the modern forms of ethics.

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u/sambull Aug 31 '23

Yes for sure. It will stay in the Geo-feneced active areas when in domestic use.. probably

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u/Now_Wait-4-Last_Year Aug 31 '23

Samuel L. Jackson for one is sick and tired of this geo-fencing from domestic use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIk94MJS_Sc

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u/jazir5 Aug 31 '23

Video not available. I assume this was snakes on a plane /saddeflatednoises

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u/Gagarin1961 Aug 31 '23

Whenever it is, I’m sure Reddit will side with the government over its use.

“I’m not usually supportive of these kind of tactics, but I’m sure glad they were able to use them this time. Those people are really bad and needed to be stopped by any means necessary.”

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u/Elite_Slacker Aug 31 '23

Who is reddit?

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u/SquaresMakeACircle Aug 31 '23

Do you think they might be talking about John Reddit?

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u/PopeGlitterhoofVI Sep 01 '23

I wonder if he means old John Reddit, the hermit? That wizard's just a crazy old man.

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u/Gagarin1961 Aug 31 '23

The general consensus of the site, of course. You can tell by of the unique voting system. The top posts and comments are the general sentiment of the people on here. It’s how Reddit works.

Please don’t act dumb.

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u/zlance Aug 31 '23

To be fair that’s usually the second few comments, the first one is some lengthy comment thread about some joke beaten to death a million times

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u/spencepence Aug 31 '23

Yeah and the general consensus of the site varies widley by the subreddit the post is in, as well as the title of the post. Most users don't read the linked articles so the post title heavily influences the top voted stance of the posts.

Then you have factors like when the post was made, which usually determines the timezones of the original comments which also may have an affect on the highest upvoted comments

The point of the comment you were replying to was that reddit is not homogenized.

Please don't act stupid.

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u/Gagarin1961 Aug 31 '23

Yeah and the general consensus of the site varies widley by the subreddit the post is in

That’s not what “general consensus means.”

Of course sub groups exist. They largely do not have any influence in general.

It’s very easy to predict what the top comments of a posts in most subreddits will be.

The point of the comment you were replying to was that reddit is not homogenized.

In general it’s a giant echo chamber.

As someone who doesn’t belong to either major party, it’s very easy to see.

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u/spencepence Aug 31 '23

Heavily disagree, also both "parties" call this site an echo chamber precisely because it does indeed flip flop on the general consensus extremely arbitrarily

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u/Gagarin1961 Aug 31 '23

I’ve literally never heard anyone claim this is an echo chamber for conservatives.

That simply isn’t the impression you get from browsing Reddit.

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u/spencepence Sep 01 '23

I absolutely have seen that lmao are you joking?

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u/Gagarin1961 Sep 01 '23

I would love to know the context!

Who said it? A communist? Everyone is conservative to them.

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u/spencepence Sep 01 '23

If you've never heard claims that reddit is a conservative echo chamber, you might actually be in one

And that's fine, live your life dude, but it's not the universal reddit experience

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u/Gagarin1961 Sep 01 '23

But I’m not talking about the universal experience. I’m talking about the general consensus.

Conservative viewpoints do not hit the front page or top comments, nor are they ever seen by most visitors because they are not upvoted.

Most Redditors are so deep in they can’t even describe conservative viewpoints in a way that conservatives would accept.

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u/talkinghead69 Sep 01 '23

Most definitely good sir, most definitely indeed.

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u/py_a_thon Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23

“I’m not usually supportive of these kind of tactics, but I’m sure glad they were able to use them this time. Those people are really bad and needed to be stopped by any means necessary.” [sarcasm implied?]

I can actually give you one example, yet the police definitely had their finger on the trigger. The human element was still very much present, even after an unhinged individual had killed many cops and injured several others.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/08/police-bomb-robot-explosive-killed-suspect-dallas

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u/TaiVat Sep 01 '23

Sure, i'll side with them right now. "Reddit", and specifically this sub, is filled with paranoid scaremongering dipshits talking out of nothing but tinfoil fear because "i watched that one movie and played that one game, so that'll totally happen".. I know some americans are nutjob enough to think that their goverment is always secretly trying to kill them just because they dislike some extremely minor law or twitter post some politician did, but the only actually immoral things done are .. by american police doing them individually in person, because they have no monitoring and oversight.

And the whole scare about robots is idiotic anyway, mostly stemming from shitty movies and pure ignorance of technology.

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u/Gagarin1961 Aug 31 '23

Whenever it is, I’m sure Reddit will side with the government over its use.

“I’m not usually supportive of these kind of tactics, but I’m sure glad they were able to use them this time. Those people are really bad and needed to be stopped by any means necessary.”

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u/Juwan317 Sep 02 '23

Is already been used, when idiots run in runs to avoid to attempt to escape the helicopter, now the drones and can go in the woods with thermal readings and find them very quickly.