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Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future (www.economist.com)

submitted 8 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

robots...can't hold ground

Maybe not yet. Maybe not even soon. But it will happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1_QhJ1EhQ

At some point, you're going to have legged robots out there, and that'll start cutting into human advantages in mobility over rugged terrain.

BigDog got rejected by the Marines because it was too loud. But that's not really a fundamental limitation of robotics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigDog

At the end of December 2015, the BigDog project was discontinued. Despite hopes that it would one day work like a pack mule for US soldiers in the field, the gas-powered engine was deemed too noisy for use in combat. A similar project for an all-electric robot named Spot was much quieter, but could only carry 40 pounds (18 kg). Both projects are no longer in progress, but the Spot Mini was released in 2019.[2][11]

That's just a load-bearer. But once you have a platform that's mobile and can go most places a human can, it's gonna get armed pretty quickly.

And it won't happen all at once -- you'll have some humans, some robots. Maybe they just have load-bearers, like what DARPA was interested in BigDog doing. Maybe a robot gets put on point when a squad is patrolling.

But the cost of a human life is pretty high, so there's a pretty potent incentive to consume a robot than a human life if possible.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 1 points 8 months ago

It's completely idiotic and against all existing reason to allow a machine to end lives on automatic. I don't think it's going to be allowed and heavily frowned upon kind of like mustard gas

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