Posted on 06/15/2021 2:18:42 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19
A brief passage from a recent UN report describes what could be the first-known case of an autonomous weapon, powered by artificial intelligence, killing in the battlefield.
Nothing transforms warfare more violently than new weapons technology. In prehistoric times, it was the club, the spear, the bow and arrow, the sword. The 16th century brought rifles. The World Wars of the 20th century introduced machine guns, planes, and atomic bombs.
Now we might be seeing the first stages of the next battlefield revolution: autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence.
In March, the United Nations Security Council published an extensive report on the Second Libyan War that describes what could be the first-known case of an AI-powered autonomous weapon killing people in the battlefield.
The incident took place in March 2020, when soldiers with the Government of National Accord (GNA) were battling troops supporting the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar (called Haftar Affiliated Forces, or HAF, in the report). One passage describes how GNA troops may have used an autonomous drone to kill retreating HAF soldiers:
(Excerpt) Read more at bigthink.com ...
The Navy Is Developing "Bio-Inspired" Drones That Transition Between Air And Water
The Navy wants to build drones that are inspired by the ways animals move and behave in the natural world and can even transition between sea and air.
By Brett Tingley June 15, 2021
Probably not. They are not autonomous. They are sophisticated remote control drones. We are still quite a way off from artificial intelligence that can have a conversation. Siri is not a conversation. Siri can’t keep up a thread past a reply to a statement. How then are we anywhere near a robot that can identify a human, determine whether it is a target, pick the point where the attack will be lethal and then determine if the target is vanquished? Fantasy.
“The 16th century brought rifles...”
No, smooth barreled muskets, replacing the Arquebuses of the 15th Century.
Rifles, with rifled barrels, didn’t show up until the early 19th Century, and still didn’t work well until the invention of the Minié ball, that could effectively use that rifling. It came along in 1853 during the Crimean War.
It’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever watched, I haven’t laughed that hard in years.
The maxim gun then. That was in a similar era.
Big, heavy, box fed, and hand cranked. Belt fed machine guns were man-portable and fully automatic.
We have an autonomous idiot robot as president,why not shoulder robots?
—
Biden is powered not by A.I., but A.S. (artificial stupidity).
Already possible with current techniques. Accuracy needs some improvement.
...determine whether it is a target..
Every human within an assigned zone or time period will be considered a target. Sloppy, but it will work well enough for the first-generation models.
The people who first deploy these systems will not care much about collateral damage.
...pick the point where the attack will be lethal and then determine if the target is vanquished?
The first generation hunter-killer machines will not be that subtle. They will just turn their targets into pink mist.
Fantasy.
I wish that it would remain a fantasy. It is coming with the next big world war.
Check out the recent war between the Azerbianis and the Armenians for a hint of things to come. We are not prepared for this.
But for every super-weapon system, there is always a super-weapon system defense. So it goes.
Loitering drones. Now to miniaturize such things like mosquitos and load them up with (you name it).
From Wiki: “STM Kargu is a small portable rotary wing kamikaze drone produced in Turkey by STM that has been designed for asymmetric warfare or counter-insurgency. It can be carried by a single personnel in both autonomous and manual modes.” (That last sentence is very poorly written, but I think it means the drone can autonomously attack.)
...
“According to STM Ceo Murat Ikinci, Kargu has a facial recognition system, suggesting it can seek out specific individuals. Its swarms are too numerous to be tackled by advanced air defense systems and can destroy a large number of targets very rapidly.
Other capabilities includes....”
This sounds like it was written by a salesman at STM, and no one believes the Turks, but if they do have it, imagine what WE have.
I’ll deploy my fully autonomous AR-14 assault weapons against them. I can hear them now hopping up and down in the safe, clamoring “Let me out! Let me out!” Those drones don’t stand a chance.
Autonomous machine guns have existed for a while. They just sit there all by themselves and shoot until the ammo runs out.
Is this cooler than that?
Maybe not but I am pretty sure I get ROBO calls from an AI.
David Langford’s Three Laws of Robotics:
1) A robot will not harm authorized Government personnel but will terminate intruders with extreme prejudice.
2) A robot will obey the orders of authorized personnel except where such orders conflict with the Third Law.
3) A robot will guard its own existence with lethal antipersonnel weaponry, because a robot is bloody expensive.
https://ansible.uk/sfx/sfx146.html
;)
The debate on that goes back and forth, but the basic logic is that the Gatling requires external power and is actually an array of single semiauto firearms rotating around a common axis. A single barrel, single breech ‘infinite repeater’ is what more people would consider a machine gun; in fact, Gatlings were originally considered *artillery pieces* until after WW2.
The first practical and effective machine gun was Hiram Maxim’s Maxim Gun - and they’re wrong about the 20th century introducing them to the world stage. They showed up in the late 1800s during the Scramble For Africa.
The Maxim gun dates to 1884 and requires brass cartridges with smokeless powder - Gatlings date to 1861 and had neither. A LOT changed during the Civil War and immediately after.
Um... Rifles were in use prior to the Revolutionary War. They first appear around 1700.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_rifle
The British would disagree that they didn’t work well.
It won’t, but people have always been devising means to kill one another. So the significance of a drone doing it, over a missile or comando team is more a matter of expense.
They’d find a way if you were a target regardless.
In the last half of the 20th century, they added a electric motor that eliminated the hand crank.
Most notorious is the GAU-8 gun in the A10 ground support aircraft.
Fires a 30mm pill at a very high rate of fire.
Smaller versions fire the 7.62 (30 cal).
P
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