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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

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/


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  • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:43PM (11 children)

    by BsAtHome (889) on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:43PM (#541050)

    Soon we will hear about the EMP gun to counter the AI. Well, maybe just drop an A-bomb in the atmosphere.

    It looks like Rise of the Machines is inevitable with the military pursuing this so vigorously.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:33PM (5 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:33PM (#541088) Journal

    Soon we will hear about the EMP gun to counter the AI. Well, maybe just drop an A-bomb in the atmosphere.

    Fry the electronics, spare the humans: explosively pumped flux compression generator [wikipedia.org]

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:41PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:41PM (#541092)

      Nuke em back to the stone age. On the plus side the survivors will be too busy banging the rocks together to care about why we haven't found alien life yet.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:08PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:08PM (#541132)

        Even better if the survivors are many, they'll devolve faster during the ensuing chaos.
        Just wipe out their electronics and the electricity grid+generators, I say; back to pumping your water using your muscles, good luck with this suckers.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Tuesday July 18 2017, @09:29PM (2 children)

          by captain normal (2205) on Tuesday July 18 2017, @09:29PM (#541171)

          My grandparents pumped water with a windmill even into the mid 50s in west Texas. I think that technology is still used in many places today. Civilization seemed to get along just fine before we developed electrical devices about 120 years ago.

          --
          When life isn't going right, go left.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:15AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:15AM (#541300)

            But just think of how low property values were with those windmills everywhere! And all the birds that were killed!

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:08PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:08PM (#541556)

            All the high speed communication technologies are electrical (or photonic) based. Instant global communications help with a lot of things, including keeping wars less widespread.

            We got along O.K. with a population of 2B or less without electricity, at 7B and rising it would be a lot harder.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:21PM (4 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:21PM (#541139) Homepage Journal

    An Air Force pilot who served during the cuban missile crisis had one on his airplane:

    A nuclear antiaircraft missile.

    It gets better. In 1984 the US unilaterally disarmed itself of all its nuclear depth charges and nuclear mines. Drive a tank over one and your whole battalion gets vaporized.

    I expect someone clued into that if these weapons were ever used, they would wipe out all life on earth forever.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:23AM (3 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:23AM (#541264) Journal

      A nuclear antiaircraft missile.

      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.

      In 1984 the US unilaterally disarmed itself of all its nuclear depth charges and nuclear mines.

      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.

      I expect someone clued into that if these weapons were ever used, they would wipe out all life on earth forever.

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:27AM (#541307)

        I don't buy that. Kill billions of people either directly or through destruction of relatively delicate infrastructure? Sure.

        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

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:02AM (#541333) Journal
          That's the sort of scenario, I'm thinking of here. It would massively suck, but it wouldn't be the end of humanity much less the end of life on Earth.
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:30PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:30PM (#541567)

        > Nuclear armed subs often have enough firepower to kill billions of people.

        FTFY. The Ohio class (from wikipedia) carries:

        24 Ă— Trident I C4 SLBM with up to 8 MIRVed 100 ktTNT W76 nuclear warheads each, range 4,000 nmi (7,400 km; 4,600 mi)

        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...

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]