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Slaughterbots

Stop Autonomous Weapons

7.4K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 8 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

3.9M views8 years ago4 recommendations

AI and machine learningAI safety and impactAI agents and tool use

A speculative short film depicting a dystopian future where swarms of cheap, autonomous micro-drones use facial recognition to execute targeted assassinations.

If this isn't what you want, please take action at autonomousweapons.org/

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Pointed to as a compelling and terrifying warning about the rapid advancement and potential misuse of autonomous weapon systems.

malloryerikon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Venezuela President Maduro 'survives drone attack'”

Can drones be stopped? They have the potential to wage campaigns of automated political violence. I see companies trying to protect against them, like Dedrone 1 -- how effective are these? I imagine most here have seen it, but if not, you must see the slaughterbots video. 2 1 link 2 link to this video

bicubicon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Fleets of drones could aid searches for lost hikers”

The tech required for search and rescue is the same tech required for search and destroy. We seem to be running headfirst into the autonomous killer bot future without giving so much as a second look at the implications. Slaughterbots 0 is a pretty good look at what can be achieved by refining and integrating technologies which all exist today. 0 link to this video

lwnealon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How the U.S. military thinks about AI [audio]”

…waiting for human permission? The first side to do so would gain a critical advantage, and we cannot have an autonomy gap. Some have raised conerns that in the extreme case, this could lead to a world of machines anonymously killing without attribution. If you haven't, see Stuart Russell's compelling short film "Slaughterbots" 2. 1 link 2 link to this video…

jtsiskinon Hacker News • Recommends

On “A swarm of drones flying through heavy forest–while staying in formation”

This brings to mind a great video which I've posted here a few times: link to this video What happens when technology progresses so much that anyone can make a swarm of killer drones? Will politicians no longer be able to go out in public? What about a distant future, when enriching uranium can be done in your garage for cheap...

MarkMMullinon Hacker News • Mentions

On “AI at Google: our principles”

We only call it AI - creating an autonomous ML system that is designed to kill anyone can lead to us all being killed by math and plastic - it's a singularly bad idea, so much so there is no scoring mechanism that justifies it - too much chance we end up with this -- link to this video

goldenkeyon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Traceability on the Internet”

…, biased on wealth and capital of weaponry and defense. Not only physically but on a knowledge and information and technological basis. Isnt the real underlying archtype of license plates and well..any authoritarian laws by the government a sort of protectionism for those of us without the money for defense and offense of our own free persons? 1 link to this video I am libertarian..but freedom in reality is a function of resources. So I cannot square this circle... laws are a hard issue.…

freeflighton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Pentagon has a laser that can identify people at a distance by their heartbeat”

> It was being pitched as the ideal way to assassinate people in a crowd - identify them by heartbeat signature, fly a drone in to drop a small explosive package on their heads. Reminds me of this little presentation 0 0 link to this video

EGregon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Turkey Now Has Swarming Suicide Drones It Could Export”

Swarming drones and AI is the scariest tech and we are going to see the consequences. Because it will be so cheap and ubiquitous. This isn’t even the atomic bomb — where the work was just too sweet to stop. This is basic technology with small incremental improvements tons of people can do. Drones are the first robots that are among us (overhead). Self-driving cars are at least very expensive to produce. But drones can be mass-produced and deployed anonymously. Drones with live munitions is terrifying. Imagine an anonymous swarm descending on Union Square in SF. Even under normal operation, drones can fall and hit someone by accident. Let alone a swarm. This is one technology I should not wan…

safogon Hacker News • Mentions

On “How once-elusive laser weapons suddenly became a reality”

That link out to the China drone swarm video is pretty crazy. I hope we do live in boring times and don't have to deal with drone warfare wherever we live. link Drones in the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Some of the same Chinese suicide drones being used. link Slaughterbots: link to this video

scrollawayon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Israel's autonomous 'robo-snipers' and suicide drones raise ethical dilemma”

Slaughterbots come to anyone's mind? For those that haven't seen it, it's on youtube. Wikipedia: link Video: link to this video

deadbolton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Autonomous drone navigates independently through the forest at 40 km/h”

This video was posted to HN a couple years ago. It's the first thing I think of whenever I watch one of these videos of new drone tech. link to this video link

mLubyon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Autonomous drone navigates independently through the forest at 40 km/h”

…way, wars fought like this may involve less loss of life, with soldiers surrendering to a cloud of slaughterbots that destroyed the automated defenses in seconds. This forthcoming ability to intimidate and harm precisely, anonymously, robotically, and at scale makes autocracy more likely and more durable. 1: link 2: "Slaughterbots TED talk." link to this video 3: "Hated in the Nation" Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 6 (Netflix)…

PontifexMinimuson Hacker News • Mentions

On “U.N. talks adjourn without deal to regulate 'killer robots'”

> Killer robots will be a great equalizer in the ability to create a nightmare hellscape I imagine most people here have already seen the Slaughterbots video: link to this video A more conventional type of attack would be using large numbers cheap cruise missiles. If you can make them for $20k each then $1bn would buy you 50,000 of them, which is probably a good deal more than the number of anti-aircraft missiles your adversary has, and certainly a lot more than their number of fighter aircraft. Therefore firing off a lot in one go would overload their defences and many would get through. If aimed at infrastructure target, they could cripple a country's economy, and how soon after that do people start…

senon Hacker News • Mentions

On “U.N. talks adjourn without deal to regulate 'killer robots'”

It'd be better to link to the source0, that's a content-stealing channel you linked to. 0 link to this video

marojejianon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Homemade, Cheap and Lethal, Attack Drones Are Vital to Ukraine”

It's eery to see reality slowly resemble science fiction of the past. obligatory Slaughterbots reference: link to this video Also scary how much of this war you can watch with a POV. UkraineWarVideoReport is full of videos where you can see the drones and humans in action link

dimmkeon Hacker News • Mentions

On “US Air Force Shoots Down Drone Swarm with THOR Microwave Weapon”

I remember the first time I learned about drone swarms was this YouTube video called Slaughterbots: link to this video Of course at this point, my country had been using drones to kill people since I was a small child, which I think is ironic. In the Slaughterbots scenario, each specific drone has sensors and AI good enough it can pilot itself and doesn’t need an external connection that can be detected or disrupted and is good enough to target individual people with facial recognition. I believe (this is not an area of expertise for me) that the drones depicted in that video are still far more advanced than what currently exists currently (but I think it could probably get there within the next 10-20…