this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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I disagree - it's evil. I'm not saying we don't need military and weapons but I'd say that if from all possibile ways of approaching this is making suicide drones is kinda evil.
Imagine having all this status, money and arguably some real skill you choose to make weapons instead of any other alternative. That's incredibly sad.
As long as they are used defensively, weapons are needed. And having the latest and greatest weapons really helps. We can see this play out in Ukraine clear as day. If Ukraine had more weapons in the beginning, Russia hadn't invaded. If they had anyways, Ukraine would've been able to rebuff them with more force. Whenever the West does send weapons to Ukraine, they have an immediate and devastating effect on Russian troops. But because we are sending so little, the war bogs down into a WW1-style slugfest. Also, the ammunition given by the West allows Ukraine to do targetted strikes mostly. Russiaon the other hand is just sending wave attacks, accepting massive civilian casulties.
Defending yourself is not evil. What's happening in Ukraine is evil, because the US did not supply enough arms
Small minded point of view. Imagine if those billions were spend productively to unite people rather than defence. I'm not saying no defence is necessary I'm just saying the other side is infinitely more efficient. We attribute diplomacy to one of the greatest human inventions not because it's more ethical (it is) but because it literally allowed us to prosper to the point where we can sustain 7 billion people with objectively great lives for the most part.
That didn't get 155mm arty rounds to Ukraine.
No amount of money can bring back people dying to Russian bombs.
It's a weapon like any other. Maybe you're iffy on the name, but suicide drones are just another way to attack specific targets, like missiles but far more precise. What is evil about having a remotely controlled aircraft hit an enemy position as opposed to artillery, bombs or gunfire hitting enemy position?
I disagree with this. There is one glaring issue with AI-powered weapons, in comparison to other traditional ones - the skill ceiling required to make massive damages at scale.
Sure, you can probably level a whole town if you get your hands on some kind of advanced artillery. But it's still vastly more complex machine, that probably requires extensive training just to operate. You need an army for that, and army is made of people who will hopefully tell you "No, we're not doing that", if your request is not reasonable. And if you somehow try to do it yourself, good luck getting more than a few shots out before someone notices and tries to stop you.
If you have an army of hundreds or thousands of AI powered suicide drones, where you just slap an explosive on them, set a target and the whole fleet will start running, you only need one person with a computer. And once you send the fleet, it's vastly more difficult to stop it. Hell, you probably don't event need to physically get to the drones, if you can hack into the system that controls them.
And that's the biggest issue with any AI-powered weapon, and a reason why they shouldn't exist.
Russian army did not, in fact, say they are not doing that. They proceeded to level entire towns. Not once, but every time the order was given.
That is true, and not exactly what I was getting at. I was more talking about stuff like coups or domestic terrorism, where you can cause a way more wast amount of damage if you have autonomous AI weapons.
Also, there was that one time in the cold war (I think) where the Russian guy refused to launch a nuke, and it turned out it was a false alarm, which has probably saved the world.
Should i.e. Putin decide to hold onto his power at all costs and started leveling cities in Russia, where most people don't agree with him, you'd probably get a lot of people in the army who wouldn't be OK with that. Maybe, I don't know. But should he have an army of autonomous AI weapons, all he needs is a few guys who do, and know how to launch it.
Not true, Russians are brainwashed to think Ukraine is actually Russia and they have been killing "Russians" and levelling "historically Russian cities" and killing "ethnically Russian population"
If there's a bullshit excuse to destroy a border town they will do it. Like "rebels took it over" or whatever
You are probably right, it wasn't really a great example. I think that's probably because Russia is already deep into dictatorship and indoctrination, so the fear-inspired loyalty is deep enough for them to not really need an AI autonomous weapons to do whatever evil they need.
But the point I was trying to make is that with AI weapons, it's definitely easier in a more stable and democratic army to get there and cause massive amount of damages, stage a coup or just do domestic terrorism, because you don't need to convince large amount of people to fight for you. You just need a few who can operate the swarm, and getting loyalty of few people is way easier than convincing an entire army.
The same can be said about weapons of mass destruction, but most of them are also really difficult to get, and pretty hard to operate - or you can be easily stopped. If you unleash a swarm of murderous autonomous drones, it will not be pretty. And that's why I hope they will get treated with the same level of respect as nukes do, and not used as a part of common conventional warfare.
No, weapons are not INHERENTLY evil - as you seem to say - nor they are good, they just are and it so happens that countries need them, either to attack or to defend. Making weapons is not an evil act per se, supplying Russia with them would be a terribly evil thing to do, while supplying Ukraine or simply stockpiling them in the west in preparation for a possible escalation is a very, very good act.
We may go to war with Russia in the future, you need to be very naive to think that’s impossible. It’s not likely but it’s a possibility that we must consider. We are seeing in the past year or two that drones are the new game changers in contemporary battlefields. It’s only because of drones on both sides that nobody is able to make advances on the frontline.
Russia has adapted eventually and is now building a shitload of drones with increasing capabilities. China is doing the same. So is Iran. All of our (collective west) enemies are investing in this, with the aim of being able to hurt us and our allies.
Now how is us developing drones (through private enterprise, as is custom in liberal societies) a bad thing? About bloody time I say.