alt Hacker NewsI think the ancestor drones are land and sea mines, or really any kind of trap that dislocates the timing and control of the "trigger" from the person who launched it into the environment.
These newer drones have just gained locomotion instead of having to wait for victims to come to them.
Replies
I think the line is even fuzzier than you've described. Drones are very much analogous to missiles and torpedoes. Torpedoes have long been used in sea mines, and 'automatically' activated upon detection of acoustic or magnetic signature match.
Autonomous drones are much more precise, thus safer for non-combatants, than land mines (which kills for decades after a war), shells, missiles, guided bombs, etc.
I'm not sure I'd consider a trap an "autonomous weapon". The trap cannot select a target. It will go off for anyone unlucky enough to step in its trigger.
An autonomous drone will select a target and pull the trigger. It fills in the position of a human pulling a trigger, which is a decision.
Maybe if robots began deciding where to lay mines, i could hand it to you.
And who is held responsible when they hallucinate and say, kill the wrong person or mistake a playground for a battlefield?
Big "an AR 15 is just an automatic bow which is basically a spear thrower which is basically a knife which his basically a punch so nothing matters anyways" vibe
Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics was based on automated killing — which he beautifully disavowed in peacetime [1]. Which historically is one of the main reasons we think about “Artificial Intelligence” instead of cybernetics (Wiener kind of pissed off the defense dept).
[1] “A Scientist Rebels,” 1947 http://lanl-the-back-story.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-scientist-...