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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday September 03 2017, @10:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the judgment-day dept.

In a televised event, Russia's President Vladimir Putin spoke to a group of students about a number of topics, including AI and drones:

Russian president Vladimir Putin spoke about the potential power of artificial intelligence to students on Friday, saying "the one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world," according to Associated Press. He then said "it would be strongly undesirable if someone wins a monopolist position," indicating that Russia would cooperate with other countries in the development of AI. While Russia is seen as skilled in technological propaganda, it has little presence in mainstream AI research.

Putin also envisioned a future for war where drones, ostensibly controlled by artificial intelligence, would fight proxy wars between countries. "When one party's drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender," he said.

Russian companies have been actively researching autonomous weapons, such as drones, robots and missiles, which would be able to pick targets and fire on their own. Documents from the US military show similar strategies, where swarms of drones would assist troops with real-time intelligence gathering and air support.

Putin puts on his Musk hat:

Putin touched on the topic of space technologies, hoping that space travel technology could one day be used in passenger travel, though not necessarily for journeys into outer space. He described the slashing of flight time from Russia's westernmost major city, Kaliningrad, to its easternmost, Vladivostok, as "a dream."

As far as space travel is concerned, Putin told students that there is hope for life on other planets in our Solar System.

"The flight to Mars would take no less than half a year, maybe even more," Putin said. "If you fly to Mars and buried yourself somewhere in there, then you could exist for some period of time. But you have to dig yourself in because cells simply die on the surface," he warned pupils.

Also at the New York Post and VOA.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday September 04 2017, @12:59AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday September 04 2017, @12:59AM (#563255) Journal

    Oh, more to the point, if the other side's drones enjoy capability and numbers advantages, sending humans to fight them will not be very helpful. You might as well surrender. If you do fight them, it will be costly for you to win since you can't easily replace the skilled human pilots.

    Drones can accelerate in ways that kill humans, and while it might take a while before the AI algorithms react to situations in a better way than humans can, drones could have the advantage of having much faster reaction times.

    http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a178485.pdf [dtic.mil]

    Visual reaction times of 143 to 461 ms, with a mean of 223 ms. Computers could get that number down to less even after counting spending some cycles to analyze incoming information.

    Pilots also get worse the longer they go without sleep:

    http://www.cti-home.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Reaction-Time-and-Fatigue-Study.pdf [cti-home.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday September 04 2017, @06:32AM

    by unauthorized (3776) on Monday September 04 2017, @06:32AM (#563317)

    You might as well surrender.

    You make the extremely naive presumptions that people will act rationally. Most people do not, and the people who sit on the top of the political chain and have the power to force young men into conscription certainly are among them.