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Sci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” | DUST

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  • May be out of date. Uploaded 7 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

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2.1M views7 years ago5 recommendations

AI and machine learningAI safety and impact

A sci-fi short film dramatizing the dangers of cheap, autonomous drone swarms programmed to target and kill humans using AI.

In a dystopian world a new form of A.I. weaponry has been created. All these drone bots need is a profile: age, sex, fitness, uniform, and ethnicity. Nuclear is obsolete. Take out your entire enemy virtually risk free. Just characterize him, release the swarm, and rest easy. "Slaughterbots" directed by Stewart Sugg #DUST #scifi #shortfilm More About Slaughterbots: The 7 minute film opens with a Silicon Valley CEO-type delivering a product presentation to a live audience a la Steve Jobs. The presentation seems innocuous enough at first—the presenter seems to be unveiling some new drone technology—but takes a dark turn when he demonstrates how these autonomous drones can slaughter humans like cattle by delivering “a shaped explosive” to the skull.The audience eats it up, clapping and laughing along with the CEO as if they hadn’t witnessed anything more dangerous than the unveiling of the iPhone X. The CEO goes further, showing videos of the tiny killer drone in action. “Let’s watch what happens when the weapons make the decisions,” the CEO says, as the bot executes a number of people on the massive screen behind him. “Now trust me, these are all bad guys.” What follows is a deeply unsettling portrait of a dystopian world where these small weaponised drones use their onboard technologies—“cameras like you use for your social media apps, facial recognition like you have on your phones!”—to make autonomous decisions about who lives and who dies. About DUST: DUST presents thought-provoking science fiction content, exploring the future of humanity through the lens of science and technology. From timeless classics to cutting-edge movies, series, short films, and podcasts, DUST acquires, produces and distributes all content types. Connect with DUST Website: watchdust.com Sign-up for DUST newsletter: eepurl.com/b_SKAz Watch DUST on your TV: Available on Roku, Samsung TV, Apple TV, Android TV...and more Watch more on YouTube: bit.ly/2amTSen Follow Us on Facebook: bit.ly/2aqYgtZ Follow Us on Instagram: bit.ly/2amAhRt Listen to the DUST podcast: Apple: bit.ly/DUST-Audio Spotify: bit.ly/DUST-Spotify Stitcher: bit.ly/DUST-Stitcher Castbox: bit.ly/DUST-Castbox iHeart: bit.ly/DUST-iHeart About Gunpowder + Sky: Creating content that resonates and impacts pop culture conversation, by empowering creators to take risks and experiment relentlessly in the pursuit of novel stories and formats. Sci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” | DUST youtube.com/watchdust Subscribe to the DUST and ALTER newsletter: eepurl.com/dChYXb

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Frequently cited in discussions about AI safety, autonomous weapons, and the ethical implications of drone warfare.

jackothyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Science fiction movies that are appropriate for 12 year olds?”

…, then you probably want to wait with a couple of those. And then I would also agree with those here that mention Inception , Interstellar , Back to the Future , The Martian , Men in Black , Minority Report , The Terminator , Terminator 2 , and The Expanse . I also don't think he should have much of a problem following along with The Matrix . 1: link to this video 2: link…
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FrustratedMonkyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The thinking path”

In reading lately have come across a lot of famous names that made 'walking' a big part of their learning. It is good way to let brain wonder and have subconscious solve problems. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Thoreau Also. Buried in the page farther down. One of the more scary takes on how we could have 'Killer AI'. Everyone seems to argue 'Killer AI' is still far in the future, because they associate it with the Terminator Movies and current Robot Tech is lagging AI. So why worry, we can still un-plug them. This video is how it will actually happen. AI can be incorporated into a lot of weapons. From the linked site link to this video
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InvertedRhodiumon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Hamas's Cheap, Makeshift Drones Are Outsmarting Israel's High-Tech Military”

I really enjoy this video, which is set in a theoretical future where just what you describe eventuated: link to this video
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zellynon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first”

Looks like most of the comments here are about the use as weapons and the possible dangers. I believe "Slaughterbots" is the canonical sci-fi video on the subject, and it appears to be aging pretty well. Unfortunately… link to this video
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nothrabannosiron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first”

Obligatory link to the short film (future documentary) “Slaughterbots” (2017), which depicts exactly this in harrowing detail: link to this video
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fxtentacleon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Shoot Paintballs With Boston Dynamics' Robot Spot”

Reminds me of this short film: link to this video Just like this, it's scary because it is believable. FWIW, here's the real military using Boston Dynamics: link And here's a remote controlled sniper rifle: link So I would be very surprised if nobody had combined them yet. In that sense, I think it is very good that MSCHF is bringing more attention to it. The sooner we start talking about laws to govern this tech, the lower the chance of it ending up in the wrong hands.
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wing-_-nutson Hacker News • Mentions

On “The US Air Force successfully tested AI-controlled jet fighter”

The military always claims they will have a human 'in the loop' to make kill decisions. That promise will go out the window just as soon as other nations arm ai enabled drones with anti air missiles. There's no time for 'human in the loop' when the first to act survives. Thus down the slippery slope we go. In 20 years time we'll probably have aircraft that do figure eights over enemy territory for hours before automatically engaging 'military aged males'. Slaughter bots is the ultimate conclusion to this: link to this video
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m348e912on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Proliferation of AI weapons among non-state actors could be impossible to stop”

>>Can anyone shed light on what the weapons would be? I guess you haven't heard of AI slaughter bots. link to this video
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lxgron Hacker News • Mentions

On “The future of warfare: A $400 drone killing a $2M tank”

“Only a net can help. And I predict that soon we will have to put up such nets above our cities, or at least government buildings, all over Europe.” That’s quite some food for thought, especially in a non-war context. Reminds me about the short film “Slaughterbots” 1 and that one Black Mirror episode with the weaponized robotic bees. 1 link to this video
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EGregon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Sam Altman: Why You Should Fear Machine Intelligence (2015)”

The paperclip optimizer is given a program and is not aligned with humans, it just pursues its goals What you should all be fearing is bot swarms and drone swarms becoming cheap and decentralized at scale online and in the real world. They can be deployed by anyone for any purpose, wreaking havoc everywhere. Every single one of our systems relies on the inefficiency of an attacker. It won’t any longer be true. Look up scenes like: link to this video link And see it coming: link Also ubiquitous cameras enable tracking everyone across every place, as soon as the databases are linked: link
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echelonon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea”

…uture looks increasingly more drone dependent. Explosives tied to cheap and plentiful delivery systems. Startups like Anduril are going to take over. Submarine drones, jet-powered drones, assassin drones. Signals intelligence and radio algorithms... This is old, and a bit too Black Mirror, but seems to be tracking the future of conflict correctly: link to this video…
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toss1on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Fastest camera drone vs. F1 car (ft. Max Verstappen) [video]”

That cat has been out of the bag for at least seven years. The Slaughterbots video was for arms-control advocacy0,1, but definitely speedrunning near-real dystopias way more than anything here... 0 link 1 link to this video
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ortusduxon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Robots Are Entering the Ukraine Battlefield”

I was watching a video about Red Bull's new drone that can keep up with a F1 car and the whole time I kept getting Slaughterbot vibes. Zero to 185mph in 4 seconds with a top speed of 215mph, relatively cheap components, multiple cameras, and decent onboard computing power. I am not looking forward to the future of warfare. link link to this video
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CalRoberton Hacker News • Mentions

On “National Guard soldiers training with 'pocket-sized' drones”

Reminiscent of the tiny autonomous drones with shaped charges that could kill people in Slaughterbots. link to this video
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EGregon Hacker News • Mentions

On “LLMs have reached a point of diminishing returns”

I dont think LLMs are the only type of AI. By the way, robot dogs now have perfect auto-aim, they can multi-shoot 50 people at once without wasting any bullets. link Also, the AI robots can detect infrared and heartbeats all around them, and can also translate wifi signatures to locate humans behind obstacles. link Self-organizing deadly drone swarms can sweep a building methodically: link Currently they’re working on network analysis to help police to do precrime at Palantir. link They can then have ubiquitous CCTV+AI feeds allow AI assistants to suggest many plausible parallel construction cases to put people away. And this is in the Western democratic countries. link Oh yeah, an…
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bostikon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA”

> 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it While we are talking about flying drones, we are not far off from Slaughterbots becoming reality.0 Why bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with with swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives? After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide. 0: link to this video
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