Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Recently, Russian arms manufacturer Kalashnikov Concern has unveiled their work on a fully automated combat machine. It looks like a drone, but the neural network that controls it allows for some autonomous ability, which is going to make for some very interesting conversation at the upcoming ARMY-2017 forum. Did somebody say war robots?
For that matter, now that neural networks are basically being weaponized, I'm sure there will be some important moral debates about their use in a field of battle. Not the least of which will be: "Isn't this exactly what Skynet wants?"
But, and we've said this many times before, technology is a tool.
It isn't inherently good or bad; that depends entirely on the intentions of the user. In this case, the technology is a weapon, but that is the purview of a military, and I think we can judge them according to their actions instead of their tech.
Plus, the robot is really freaking cool. We'd be doing it a disservice by ignoring that. Let's take a closer look.
We all know that drones are already used in combat, but this robot is no drone.
Drones require operators, and while modern drones do have elements that can acquire targets without human control, they aren't fully autonomous. By using a neural network to control the drone, full autonomy is possible.
So far, there's no word on whether the module will fire without human authorization. What information we do have suggests that the use of a neural network is intended to quickly acquire many targets–something well within the capabilities of modern AI technology.
Source: https://edgylabs.com/war-robots-automated-kalashnikov-neural-network-gun/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:23AM (3 children)
It's the stupidest weapon ever until you need to use it to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from a squadron of incoming strategic bombers. Total nuclear war is its own reality.
Nuclear mines don't make so much sense (they'd be detonated remotely to take out large military units which you can take out in other ways with nukes), but nuclear depth charges do. Nuclear armed subs often have enough firepower to kill millions of people.
Sorry, I don't buy that. Kill billions of people either directly or through destruction of relatively delicate infrastructure? Sure. Kill all life? You need a bigger bomb than that. It's not impossible with enough nukes, but you need a fair number more than were present in the arsenals at the peak of the Cold War.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:27AM (1 child)
About 5 billion actually beginning on N-day until after the year from hell ended. A global census of sorts was only able to be organized a few years after reconstruction had started, so that number is a lot more reliable than what we guess about the total number of deaths on N-day itself. That still leaves over 2 billion humans on the face of the planet, but birth defects have become a lot more common. People also can't expect to be able to live into their 80s and 90s any more.
I expect that safety precautions and recommendations will keep getting better all the time, and maybe our great grandchildren's children will enjoy the kind of life most people take for granted in this era.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:02AM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:30PM
> Nuclear armed subs often have enough firepower to kill billions of people.
FTFY. The Ohio class (from wikipedia) carries:
That's 192 warheads. A single determined, fully armed submarine commander sitting somewhere near Iceland could pretty much erase civilization in the US and Europe.
If you're just going for max population cull, look at everywhere those missiles can reach from the just offshore Mumbai...
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