Slaughterbots

Can drones be stopped? They have the potential to wage campaigns of automated political violence. I see companies trying to protect against them, like Dedrone [1] -- how effective are these? I imagine most here have seen it, but if not, you must see the slaughterbots video. [2] [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

The tech required for search and rescue is the same tech required for search and destroy. We seem to be running headfirst into the autonomous killer bot future without giving so much as a second look at the implications. Slaughterbots [0] is a pretty good look at what can be achieved by refining and integrating technologies which all exist today. [0] [VIDEO]

The substantive part of this conversation comes about 35 minutes in, when Allen describes the DoD's five AI ethics principles: that any deployed AI systems must be "Responsible, Equitable, Traceable, Reliable, and Governable." [1]. I think "Responsible" raises some hard questions. Today, any weapons use by a robot might require a responsible human operator to first (remotely) pull the trigger. But what if an adversary allows their robots to fire without waiting for human permission? The first side to do so would gain a critical advantage, and we cannot have an autonomy gap. Some have raised conerns that in the extreme case, this could lead to a world of machines anonymously killing without attribution. If you haven't, see Stuart Russell's compelling short film "Slaughterbots" [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

This brings to mind a great video which I've posted here a few times: [VIDEO] What happens when technology progresses so much that anyone can make a swarm of killer drones? Will politicians no longer be able to go out in public? What about a distant future, when enriching uranium can be done in your garage for cheap...

We only call it AI - creating an autonomous ML system that is designed to kill anyone can lead to us all being killed by math and plastic - it's a singularly bad idea, so much so there is no scoring mechanism that justifies it - too much chance we end up with this -- [VIDEO]

I never realized license plates were able to be utilized by a well funded private data aggregation operation. Great observation. How far do we have to go with allowances for information and actions that are taunts for death and destruction? It seems to me that the only fair way to shape society and well..shared reality..is to allow everyone to do everything and anything and allow others who feel strongly to enact responses..ie punishments. This will eventually maybe be the case ala Star Wars, independent agents roaming reality, with no law other than consequence by others. It seems this is untenable too because it evolves into unfair reality, biased on wealth and capital of weaponry and defense. Not only physically but on a knowledge and information and technological basis. Isnt the real underlying archtype of license plates and well..any authoritarian laws by the government a sort of protectionism for those of us without the money for defense and offense of our own free persons? [1] [VIDEO] I am libertarian..but freedom in reality is a function of resources. So I cannot square this circle... laws are a hard issue.

> It was being pitched as the ideal way to assassinate people in a crowd - identify them by heartbeat signature, fly a drone in to drop a small explosive package on their heads. Reminds me of this little presentation [0] [0] [VIDEO]

Swarming drones and AI is the scariest tech and we are going to see the consequences. Because it will be so cheap and ubiquitous. This isn’t even the atomic bomb — where the work was just too sweet to stop. This is basic technology with small incremental improvements tons of people can do. Drones are the first robots that are among us (overhead). Self-driving cars are at least very expensive to produce. But drones can be mass-produced and deployed anonymously. Drones with live munitions is terrifying. Imagine an anonymous swarm descending on Union Square in SF. Even under normal operation, drones can fall and hit someone by accident. Let alone a swarm. This is one technology I should not want to be in anyone’s hands, but if it is, it should be in the hands of the State and not everyone. Just like bombs. PS: With cheap cameras being ubiquitous and people can be identified by their gait, heartbeat etc. consumer level tech can also include an AI that can cross correlate everywhere you’ve been. Businesses would use it to fine you when you park your car for too long and don’t go into the store. But governments and police departments can concoct tons of believable stories with parallel construction and put anyone they want away. In fact AI can also be adopted in other places in the policing and judicial process (as with Palantir) leading to a Kafkaesque experience for sentencing. And with deepfakes it’s worse than that. Anyone could create a believable video of a rape-caught-on-vid