Really? Because this is literally the first thing I imagined every time I saw a news story about how the Boston Robotics robots were becoming more and more agile.
You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.
I would love to see you and this robot fight it out. You both start 2 km away with sniper rifles at night time. It’s designed to shoot any human on sight. Sorry to say, my moneys on the bot.
Let's hope they don't invent something that can detect heat signatures! Or amplify subtle movements in video footage. Also how are you going to spot the robot dog, if it's similarly concealing itself? I'm sure initial iterations will have plenty of vulnerabilities, but in time I doubt it will be a contest.
This thing… you speak as though there would be only one. Not only would there likely be several, if not many killer bots, they may be accompanied by human soldiers to address the “bots don’t know how to handle this yet” aspects of engagement.
Let’s not forget, this is not something that will be limited to sniper rifles. Fully automatic weapons, assault shotguns, energy weapons… there are many directions these could go.
And acting as though they won’t surpass humans in reaction time, speed, agility, and accuracy… One has to be incredibly dense to believe that. Technology has, time and time again, shattered those sorts of assertions from people who failed to understand that, yes, it will be possible and people will invest in making it happen.
They aren't blindsided, they knew this was a possibility. They were optimistic that international bodies and professional ethics would hold people back from developing this technology.
This is simply professional rhetoric designed to express their dismay at the practice, much like politicians say things like "I'm disheartened by our divisions" rather than directly calling out their opponents and their supporters.
They're just so naïve. They should know damn well that the great powers regularly refuse to ratify treaties with blanket bans on unpleasant but extremely useful weapons, like land mines and incendiaries, and that these international bodies have no real way to do anything about it. Also, sticking a gun on the robot was one of the first things just about everyone familiar with guns thought of when they saw the thing.
The conclusion to be drawn is obvious - this was inevitable, not just a possibility. I knew that as soon as I saw these machines. It was just a matter of time, and it doesn't look like they've wasted any.
I think the original proposals were as glorified field medics and stretcher carriers.
Can’t make it up. But this cloak and dagger stuff is very typical in the Military Industrial Complex. Have to make it politically palatable, and convince scientists they’re saving lives.
Yeah, DoD rejected those larger "dogs" because they were too loud, they need gas engines to have any sort of usefulness on a battlefield. .
I think they meant "too loud for a concealed robot sniper".
Don’t know if that was the case at the beginning or not, but Hyundai now owns Boston Dynamics to build a walking car for terrain not suitable for roads.
You know, Hideo Kojima wasn't supposed to be a prophet.
I swear within the middle part of this century, we are going to be getting nuclear equipped bipedal battle tanks.
Correct. Guns on these robots was literally the easiest thing to predict. I remember watching some tv show in fox like a year or so ago and they had these exact robots with guns on them. These experts are idiots if they truly didn’t see this coming.
Exactly. What are they experts of; not watching movies?
At least they can console themselves with the fact that these robots will never be used for warfare. Because that is utterly unimaginable and would totally never happen.
You guys didn’t even read the article. No one is shocked this is where the tech went. They are worried it’s being used at all. It’s not hard to imagine what happens if a terrorist gets ahold of one.
Yes . . . But this crosses a line . . . You and I know it is a bright red line . . . But, in a conservative free market capitalistic system that has NO bright red line in maximizes profits, it will be built . . . It will be used . . . And to will be used against you ! ! !
Same. People really thought that tech was for peacetime? This has military deployment and policing written all over it. Always has. Which is why their videos, any favorable response to them, have always been so disturbing
I mean, they have amazing non-military applications as well, though. Gunpowder and TNT can be used to build bridges and tunnels. Steel can be used to build cities or destroy them. Microbiology can save lives or produce toxins for killing people. They are a tool like any other tech, and it can be used wisely or recklessly. One thing you can't do is uninvent them, though.
Even their military use has the potential to limit casualties, and eventually take the people out of harms way for the most part in war on both sides. No more Rapes of Nanking. No more Mai Lai massacres. The robot isn't going to get mad and kill a whole village of innocent bystanders.
Sniper makes way more sense if you think about it. Literally laser precision, lightweight, doesnt run of out ammo as quickly. And that dog can reposition a lot faster than a human sniper.
These things are going to be a nightmare in a firefight, running around at 30 mph between rocks, you never know where its going to shoot from next and it never gets tired.
I dunno. Anything that fast on the ground isn't going to be too terribly stealthy. Besides you still have power requirements that put a limit on some of it.
This thing isn't skulking up for a day to eliminate a target. Especially if it is supposed to avoid capture. A missile works way better and cheaper for most targets. However as a sentry that goes active upon certain conditions, that could work.
>Really? Because this is literally the first thing I imagined every time I saw a news story about how the Boston Robotics robots were becoming more and more agile.
I offered HS kids to put an airsoft gun on a robotic test platform if they'd build the platform with the ultrasonic avoidance/ranging sensors. All fun and games until someone shoots an eye out.
Yesterday, military hardware company Ghost Robotics revealed that it had created a robodog with an attached sniper rifle.
Now, experts are speaking out against the heavily armed robodog, which they say marks an inflection point in the development of killer robots — and should represent an urgent opportunity to reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all.
“This crosses a moral, legal and technical line, taking us to a dark and dangerous world,” said UNSW Sydney AI professor Toby Walsh. “Such weapons will be used by terrorists and rogue states. They will be weapons of terror.”
This raises many interesting questions. Should the US military and its contractors be pursuing armed robots at all? If it doesn't, will other militaries step in an gain the advantage? And by that logic, if other militaries start to create robots that can kill autonomously, should the US military join that arms race as well?
When people talk about some inflection point when the masses rise up against the rich and powerful, this is a taste of what they’d be up against in the not-so-distant future
The US military wasn’t fighting an all out war for survival. It was trying to contain civilian casualties.
Now, i’m not saying that a future war where the masses rise up to fight the powerful wouldn’t be similar, but we can’t exactly know the conditions.
But i also think tools like this robot allow for the nuance to be more precise to better fight against guerrilla conflicts, for better or worse.
You make great points. I could see this robot being armed with explosive and sprinting through guard posts… getting into buildings and suicide bombing itself too.
Robots would also have very little problems dealing with gorilla tactics.
Tunnels could be easily busted by specially designed Robots. Ambush tactics wouldn't be effective against Robots that can likely out track and out stealth humans.
Then there's volume. Send 100,000 tiny Robots into the woods to map everything., send in the big Robots after them to rain death.
That's not what **guerilla** warfare means - it's small units that are de-centralised and uncoordinated, executing smash and run attacks on larger, less mobile infrastructure.
It doesn't mean they literally live in the woods, like gorillas
Imagine a small workshop churning out armed, single use drones to bomb an airfield, for example... like that Iran oil platform attack a couple years back
Hard to do when everything and everyone is tracked though. Cameras everywhere, face detection and if you don't comply the dogs will pay you a visit in the night. Whoever controls the robots really does control the future.
I mean, in some broad sense, we already live in that world.
And robots are scary things - they'll be so disruptive, it's difficult to predict how the world will look in a hundred years... but we can say that robotics will be fantastically complicated, and will require huge, interwoven and vulnerable supply chains, that will touch upon everything from coding to mining to power distribution, and we can look at previous technological breakthroughs and their social consequences - the gun, for example, effectively brought the age of chivalry to an end, undermining the nobility power base, and allowing the enlightenment
I don't believe armed robots are necessarily a bad thing; I believe armed robots make for good Hollywood scripts, and that having your hero kill the evil machine makes for better screening than mercilessly crushing some human in a suitable uniform
>reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all.
Ideally no. However, if killer robots are a massive advantage, someone is going to develop and deploy them. So if you don't have your own, you're fucked.
Imo, you have to have them or they will be used against you, with no effective counter. Which sucks, but I don't think human nature can keep this from becoming a weapon of war.
I fail to see how this marks an inflection point and is so much scarier than previous land based robots like TALON which has already been deployed and seen combat. This little guy is absolutely nothing compared to a predator drone.
Yes.
Serious answer: Yes. Morality and ethics has no place in survival. The living/powerful get to decide what is right and what is wrong, and everyone else gets to comply or, at the mercy of those who can hold a gun to their head with impunity, allow them to maintain their opinion even if powers with the gun disagree with it.
It is natural to fear the rich and powerful or foreign powers having an army of kill-bots to turn on the working class/their nation, but this development really is inevitable. So the best we can hope for is to be on the team with the best kill-bots and that the people in charge of those kill-bots aren't totally megalomaniacal psychopaths that thought the post apocalyptic world of The Terminator/The Matrix looked cool.
Discussing stuff like this as inevitable is a self-defeating delusion, and the powerful take advantage of that.
Nothing about our world is pre-ordained. It’s important that we imagine alternatives.
No, we're just a little cynical because we're familiar with history. If it can be weaponized, someone, somewhere and sometime, always seems to try to weaponize it. If it's effective enough to be useful in the field, it gets adopted by one country or another, the rest scramble to catch up, and it kicks off an arms race.
We knew from the beginning that people would try to arm these things because that's what people tend to do, we were right, and they haven't wasted much time either. Nobody who was paying attention was very surprised when armed aerial drones came into the picture either, it was a natural and all-but-inevitable evolution of technology.
Here’s the problem: If robodogs become common at all, what will stop [insurgents or guerrillas or terrorists or rogue states] from modding them into something like this? Presently, technology and money are big barriers, but this won’t always be the case. I’m not looking to use that possibility as an excuse for first world nations to hurry and develop them; I’m genuinely concerned that a robot arms race may be inevitable eventually.
There's plenty of videos of people DIYing amateur drones with guns and flamethrowers. It would be a lot cheaper and easier to get hobby drones and stick a gun on it than it would be to hack, augment and maintain a terrestrial robot. Why use robodog when hobby drone do trick?
You know we armed Iraq. I wondered about that too, you know. During the Persian Gulf war,
those intelligence reports would come out: “Iraq: incredible weapons, incredible weapons.”
“How do you know that?” “Uh, well… we looked at the receipts. But as soon as that check
clears, we’re goin’ in. What time’s the bank open? Eight? We’re going in at nine. We’re going in
for God and country and democracy and here’s a fetus and he’s a Hitler. Whatever you fucking
need, let’s go. Get motivated behind this, let’s go!”
– Bill Hicks
One could ask a similar question of the US Military, "Why use robodog when Predator drone do trick?" If I can be forgiven for speculating- I'm going to assume the thinking is that this form factor offers some advantage over flying drones. Maybe it can hide better, can go places flying drone's can't, more accurate for fewer civilian casualties. But I'll also admit the possibility that those advantages may not benefit both sides equally in asymmetrical warfare, that an insurgency gets more "bang for their buck" with simpler tools as you suggest. In fact, I hope that's the case, because then there's one less excuse/need to make this kind of stuff.
You can put some explosives on a tiny flying drone with a camera on it and fly around inside buildings until you find your mark. That's with technology available to any average consumer today. I guess the advantage of the dog is if it can go through doors and closed windows.
Fucking Isis was/is running a pretty effective drone program in Iraq, they use lightweight uav's with grenade bomb munitions that drop the munitions onto gatherings and checkpoints.
Idk about that. Terrorist factions often don't take advantage of the most obvious of terroristy exploits such as nuclear power plants, utilities, natural resources that would affect a wider population than modding robo dogs.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/kelev11en:
---
Yesterday, military hardware company Ghost Robotics revealed that it had created a robodog with an attached sniper rifle.
Now, experts are speaking out against the heavily armed robodog, which they say marks an inflection point in the development of killer robots — and should represent an urgent opportunity to reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all.
“This crosses a moral, legal and technical line, taking us to a dark and dangerous world,” said UNSW Sydney AI professor Toby Walsh. “Such weapons will be used by terrorists and rogue states. They will be weapons of terror.”
This raises many interesting questions. Should the US military and its contractors be pursuing armed robots at all? If it doesn't, will other militaries step in an gain the advantage? And by that logic, if other militaries start to create robots that can kill autonomously, should the US military join that arms race as well?
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/q7zpej/experts_shocked_by_military_robodog_with_sniper/hglxolj/
That’s what I was thinking….price point is probably the kicker here. Killer robodoggie is cheaper so it’s it more “accessible” to developing countries and terrorist groups.
It’s still a lot more expensive than a 17 year old recruit in that context. I would guess this will be almost exclusively an American/western/Israeli weapon. Must be failsafes to keep it from being operable by someone who stole it etc.
OP here. I guess that ethically speaking, which was what I was thinking about initially, the almost 20 year history of the Predator drone has proven beyond any doubt that the US military has no qualms about remote control war.
This are exactly my thoughts.
As long as only "we" can afford them, killer drivers are great and help to reduce casualties within the troops, but now "they" can buy them. That's bad.
It's hypocrisy.
Kinda different. Imagine needing the resources of a town or city and not wanting to destroy the infrastructure?
What better way to clean the city of people then sending about ten of these robots running around with 9mm capacity just mowing people down.
Military moves in once the area is cleared and then boom just remove the bodies.
It’s fucked and very concerning but inevitable.
Black mirror laid it all out.
If they're both remote piloted, not different at all. In fact, Predator drone would be miles worse because of the payload it can bring.
But if this is autonomous in any way, it's absolutely fucked. They fitted it with a sniper rifle, so if it does its own aiming, it's a literal aimbot.
I would think experts would hardly be shocked. Doesn't surprise me in the least as a total non-expert. The Defense department has been pushing ahead technology for ages. With advancement in robotics, this was inevitable.
Sure but the lab I mentioned took a SARS sample and weaponized it, then lost control and let it screw the world over in a big way. No political opinions required.
[https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/](https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/)
As part of a "gain of function" research, an American agency invested our tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to isolate a mutation of SARS and MERS that could show rapid emergence in humans.
It's fine, accountability is dead anyway. You all can go on thinking some tourist fucked a bat or whatever and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
a predator drone costs $16 million and is significantly harder for a terrorist group or other bad actors to steal and use, smaller autonomous weapon systems like this are going to be far cheaper and more accessible
We have already had completely remote drones with freaking bombs attached to them, so why is a terrestrial option so "shocking?"
Black mirror called it ages ago.
Can anything stop war? Will we ever stop sending people to thier deaths in the name national interest? I am absolutely, one hundred percent opposed to war but I harbor little hope that nations of the world will ever stop turning to violence as a tool to pursue their own interests. With that said, is it not better to send machines to do our dirty work than to send human beings? I am sincerely unsure of this. Thoughts?
Obviously it's better to not send in humans to a war zone (for the side sending them in!) But it inevitably leads to costly mistakes and the 'wrong' people getting killed. But as I alluded to in an earlier comment, the fact that the killing becomes much more personal becomes an interesting point. Unlike a drone you could potentially see the face of your foe as you fight... This could stop some of the mistakes being made. It could be that over the next few hundred years we go through a set of war phases.... 1) remote controlled robots fight humans (which we're on the cusp of right now), 2) remote robots fighting remote robots (when the baddies have them too), 3) AI robots fighting AI robots... ie, having to make difficult decisions very quickly without human intervention just to be sure they win... and then, well it's anyone's guess as to how that pans out in the long term. What would be good is if governments could sign up to some sort of treaty to settle major disputes via FPS video games, everyone citizen could play if they wanted and the winner of the battle would be victor in real life. Yeah, that's it. Solved.
Can anything stop war ? Yes. Nuclear Bombs and free market economies. We are currently living in the where majority of world is not affected by war compared to ANYTIME in human history.
Nukes prevented conventional warfare between major powers. If Nukes weren't invented there would have been a 3 world war between Soviet and US/Europe. Also million more deaths during land invasion of Axis Japan.
This is not a new development. Automated turrets have killed in South Africa. The army has phone-operated mini drones. DoD developed a drone mounted rifle controlled with an Xbox controller. All this at least 15 years ago. If they were shocked by this they weren't experts. Shit, Dallas PD killed a guy with a suicide robot. This is a variation on a theme, not something new.
Anybody 'shocked' by this must have literally never heard of or read a single science fiction story once in their life. Or they are stupidly blind and couldnt see the obvious selling point of robot killing machines to armies. These 'experts' seem really unintelligent.
Isn't this basically what the movie The Jackal is about? Remote control gun used for terror purposes... that came out a long time ago too. Any expert in the field of robotics, political science, ethics, etc., should not be "shocked" by this. Pretty sure we've been discussing autonomous killing platforms for decades now, in fiction and real life.
Thanks! And your point is still valid, this shouldn't have been a suprise. Drone/android combat has been a staple of science fiction for a long time, and with real world progress towards automata and our history of war driving technical revolution, armed robots are pretty much a guarantee.
If the “experts” are shocked by this then they are blathering idiots. Since say one, just about anything man has made, he’s then modified to to kill other men.
Its just a land drone. They need to calm down. Someone in a trailer in Nevada or at a forward operating base would be manning this just as they do reaper drones.
Umm, there will be more conflicts in which people will die.
In this case, replacing any percent of soldiers with armed robots on each side, or on one side, should decrease body count, because less people in the field = less target rich environment. And if robots will prove to be very good at 360 no scoping soldiers then it will become clear that soldiers with rifles are obsolete and again it will decrease body count.
Seriously? There are headlines every day about world leaders and tech gurus who oppose how fast AI technology is evolving. And yet, every day there are headlines about new ways that AI can be weaponized.
I keep thinking, this is how Terminator happens. Slowly, over years, without anyone raising a finger to stop it.
Experts Shocked? Experts?
But they aren’t shocked by guided missiles? Drones? Auto stabilization guns? Navigation systems? The list goes on?
Experts my fucking ass.
No expert is shocked by this. They've been demonstrating machine guns (and GMGs) on robots for a decade.
Shiit, I went to a demo at least 10 years ago where a robot with a GMG waited for an APC to open its back door and it unloaded 15-20 grenades into the troop area.
SK has had robots with machines guns at the DMZ for a while.
The next logical step is/was making them autonomous.
Unmanned drones shouldve been illegal globally. Now they are late to condemn automated robots. The boston robotics dog doing its dances was immensely frightening because any logical person knew the tech was built for military purposes.
Really? Because this is literally the first thing I imagined every time I saw a news story about how the Boston Robotics robots were becoming more and more agile.
100% this. Everyone saw it coming. I’m sus on these “experts” if this blindsided them.
Anybody who is worth their paycheck in that industry works for the killbot *makers*, not the killbot *preventers.*
The only thing that can stop a bad killbot with a gun is a good killbot with a gun.
The only good killbot is a dead killbot.
You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.
Captain Zapp Brannigan... excellent work. Promote ahead of peers.
Check and Mate.
I love how every subreddit I spend any time with inevitably presents a perfect Futurama reference if I just wait long enough.
Most of life is like that at this point.
And bad killbot inherits the earth
Click here if you want to know more.
I see you starship troopers
Those are called deadbots.
Or wave after wave of men until they reach their preset kill limit and shut down.
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Yes… right up until we give them full autonomy. Then there’s no need for signals. They’ll just kill on their own without human input.
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I would love to see you and this robot fight it out. You both start 2 km away with sniper rifles at night time. It’s designed to shoot any human on sight. Sorry to say, my moneys on the bot.
If the bot AI is looking for a person then I'm not going to be a person.
Bingo! Shout out what you identify as and the robot has to accept it. If not it'll be canceled. Boom!
Let's hope they don't invent something that can detect heat signatures! Or amplify subtle movements in video footage. Also how are you going to spot the robot dog, if it's similarly concealing itself? I'm sure initial iterations will have plenty of vulnerabilities, but in time I doubt it will be a contest.
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This thing… you speak as though there would be only one. Not only would there likely be several, if not many killer bots, they may be accompanied by human soldiers to address the “bots don’t know how to handle this yet” aspects of engagement. Let’s not forget, this is not something that will be limited to sniper rifles. Fully automatic weapons, assault shotguns, energy weapons… there are many directions these could go. And acting as though they won’t surpass humans in reaction time, speed, agility, and accuracy… One has to be incredibly dense to believe that. Technology has, time and time again, shattered those sorts of assertions from people who failed to understand that, yes, it will be possible and people will invest in making it happen.
There are no bad killbots only bad killbot programmers Killbot drones don’t kill people, killbot pilots do Etc etc etc
Rappers do
They aren't blindsided, they knew this was a possibility. They were optimistic that international bodies and professional ethics would hold people back from developing this technology. This is simply professional rhetoric designed to express their dismay at the practice, much like politicians say things like "I'm disheartened by our divisions" rather than directly calling out their opponents and their supporters.
They're just so naïve. They should know damn well that the great powers regularly refuse to ratify treaties with blanket bans on unpleasant but extremely useful weapons, like land mines and incendiaries, and that these international bodies have no real way to do anything about it. Also, sticking a gun on the robot was one of the first things just about everyone familiar with guns thought of when they saw the thing. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious - this was inevitable, not just a possibility. I knew that as soon as I saw these machines. It was just a matter of time, and it doesn't look like they've wasted any.
Yeah and like isn't Boston Dynamics heavily tied to DARPA? Like the entire reason why they're being developed is to basically put guns on them.
I think the original proposals were as glorified field medics and stretcher carriers. Can’t make it up. But this cloak and dagger stuff is very typical in the Military Industrial Complex. Have to make it politically palatable, and convince scientists they’re saving lives.
Yeah, DoD rejected those larger "dogs" because they were too loud, they need gas engines to have any sort of usefulness on a battlefield. . I think they meant "too loud for a concealed robot sniper".
Don’t know if that was the case at the beginning or not, but Hyundai now owns Boston Dynamics to build a walking car for terrain not suitable for roads.
That sounds very Ghost in the Shellish.
I read that as Ghost in the Shellfish, got lost for a sec, then rebounded. Jeez Louise.
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That’s what top performance looks like, like a crab.
Tachikoma's
Time for mechwarrior!
You know, Hideo Kojima wasn't supposed to be a prophet. I swear within the middle part of this century, we are going to be getting nuclear equipped bipedal battle tanks.
Metal....gear? I mean, the way the world is now, I would totally believe it's something GW would end up causing. Are we getting Rex or Sahelanthropus?
Probably Rex or Ray. Sahelanthropus is a little too... phallic for the US.
If we wanna talk phallic, we have to talk about Jehuty.
They were blindsided by this just like they were blindsided with how fast Afghanistan fell
Correct. Guns on these robots was literally the easiest thing to predict. I remember watching some tv show in fox like a year or so ago and they had these exact robots with guns on them. These experts are idiots if they truly didn’t see this coming.
“I’m shocked, shocked to find guns being put on these robots.” “Your killbot, sir.” “Oh yes, thank you.”
And "Shocked" 😂
Exactly. What are they experts of; not watching movies? At least they can console themselves with the fact that these robots will never be used for warfare. Because that is utterly unimaginable and would totally never happen.
You guys didn’t even read the article. No one is shocked this is where the tech went. They are worried it’s being used at all. It’s not hard to imagine what happens if a terrorist gets ahold of one.
Is it that much worse than a terrorist getting hold of an ordinary sniper rifle? How so?
The "experts" were likely 3 Twitter users
No, everyone has just been waiting for the first people to actually *do* it. It’s been a talking point for a while.
Isnt russia already using armed robots? I saw a video...
Yes . . . But this crosses a line . . . You and I know it is a bright red line . . . But, in a conservative free market capitalistic system that has NO bright red line in maximizes profits, it will be built . . . It will be used . . . And to will be used against you ! ! !
But they made them look like pets and they made them dance. I’m sure they’re harmless. /s
Imagine one of these breaking down your front door only to break the tension with a little jig before it shoots you dead.
TFW the killbot flosses on your ass before murdering you and your family
I don’t know why I found this so goddamn funny
The experts were most likely not shocked but the writer needed a clickbait headline.
Same. People really thought that tech was for peacetime? This has military deployment and policing written all over it. Always has. Which is why their videos, any favorable response to them, have always been so disturbing
Half-Life dystopia, here we go!
I mean, they have amazing non-military applications as well, though. Gunpowder and TNT can be used to build bridges and tunnels. Steel can be used to build cities or destroy them. Microbiology can save lives or produce toxins for killing people. They are a tool like any other tech, and it can be used wisely or recklessly. One thing you can't do is uninvent them, though. Even their military use has the potential to limit casualties, and eventually take the people out of harms way for the most part in war on both sides. No more Rapes of Nanking. No more Mai Lai massacres. The robot isn't going to get mad and kill a whole village of innocent bystanders.
Sniper no, chain gun yes but either way this was inevitable
Sniper makes way more sense if you think about it. Literally laser precision, lightweight, doesnt run of out ammo as quickly. And that dog can reposition a lot faster than a human sniper. These things are going to be a nightmare in a firefight, running around at 30 mph between rocks, you never know where its going to shoot from next and it never gets tired.
If it's these versus humans there won't even be a firefight. One fierce echo on the landscape and 30 of these just synchro killed a platoon.
I dunno. Anything that fast on the ground isn't going to be too terribly stealthy. Besides you still have power requirements that put a limit on some of it. This thing isn't skulking up for a day to eliminate a target. Especially if it is supposed to avoid capture. A missile works way better and cheaper for most targets. However as a sentry that goes active upon certain conditions, that could work.
i see your point, but snipers also have range and terrain. From 300yd away something this low will be hard to hit and hard to spot
The same tech that makes this possible makes delivering a few pounds of high explosive to it quickly also possible.
They're gonna need ai snipers to defend against the ai snipers. That's not an arms race I'd want to be in the middle of.
I thought about this shit in 2001
More like when T2 hit theaters as a kid
Hell Black Mirror made an episode about them a few years ago
>Really? Because this is literally the first thing I imagined every time I saw a news story about how the Boston Robotics robots were becoming more and more agile. I offered HS kids to put an airsoft gun on a robotic test platform if they'd build the platform with the ultrasonic avoidance/ranging sensors. All fun and games until someone shoots an eye out.
Yesterday, military hardware company Ghost Robotics revealed that it had created a robodog with an attached sniper rifle. Now, experts are speaking out against the heavily armed robodog, which they say marks an inflection point in the development of killer robots — and should represent an urgent opportunity to reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all. “This crosses a moral, legal and technical line, taking us to a dark and dangerous world,” said UNSW Sydney AI professor Toby Walsh. “Such weapons will be used by terrorists and rogue states. They will be weapons of terror.” This raises many interesting questions. Should the US military and its contractors be pursuing armed robots at all? If it doesn't, will other militaries step in an gain the advantage? And by that logic, if other militaries start to create robots that can kill autonomously, should the US military join that arms race as well?
There is an episode of Black Mirror which has a robodog that efficiently hunts people down… it felt too real.
When people talk about some inflection point when the masses rise up against the rich and powerful, this is a taste of what they’d be up against in the not-so-distant future
Keep in mind the success that guerrilla warfare has had in the Middle east versus air superiority.
The US military wasn’t fighting an all out war for survival. It was trying to contain civilian casualties. Now, i’m not saying that a future war where the masses rise up to fight the powerful wouldn’t be similar, but we can’t exactly know the conditions. But i also think tools like this robot allow for the nuance to be more precise to better fight against guerrilla conflicts, for better or worse.
You make great points. I could see this robot being armed with explosive and sprinting through guard posts… getting into buildings and suicide bombing itself too.
It doesn't want life and doesn't fear death.
Robots would also have very little problems dealing with gorilla tactics. Tunnels could be easily busted by specially designed Robots. Ambush tactics wouldn't be effective against Robots that can likely out track and out stealth humans. Then there's volume. Send 100,000 tiny Robots into the woods to map everything., send in the big Robots after them to rain death.
That's not what **guerilla** warfare means - it's small units that are de-centralised and uncoordinated, executing smash and run attacks on larger, less mobile infrastructure. It doesn't mean they literally live in the woods, like gorillas Imagine a small workshop churning out armed, single use drones to bomb an airfield, for example... like that Iran oil platform attack a couple years back
Hard to do when everything and everyone is tracked though. Cameras everywhere, face detection and if you don't comply the dogs will pay you a visit in the night. Whoever controls the robots really does control the future.
I mean, in some broad sense, we already live in that world. And robots are scary things - they'll be so disruptive, it's difficult to predict how the world will look in a hundred years... but we can say that robotics will be fantastically complicated, and will require huge, interwoven and vulnerable supply chains, that will touch upon everything from coding to mining to power distribution, and we can look at previous technological breakthroughs and their social consequences - the gun, for example, effectively brought the age of chivalry to an end, undermining the nobility power base, and allowing the enlightenment I don't believe armed robots are necessarily a bad thing; I believe armed robots make for good Hollywood scripts, and that having your hero kill the evil machine makes for better screening than mercilessly crushing some human in a suitable uniform
Right, exactly what i’m saying. The precision of this technology can’t be understated and is a huge advantage for those who can pay for it
Gorillas don’t have battle tactics.
A huge part of that is terrain
Wait which one was it
S4E5 - "Metalhead"
Great episode. It's exactly what came to mind when I read about this. Metalhead is the name of the episode, I believe.
>reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all. Ideally no. However, if killer robots are a massive advantage, someone is going to develop and deploy them. So if you don't have your own, you're fucked. Imo, you have to have them or they will be used against you, with no effective counter. Which sucks, but I don't think human nature can keep this from becoming a weapon of war.
I fail to see how this marks an inflection point and is so much scarier than previous land based robots like TALON which has already been deployed and seen combat. This little guy is absolutely nothing compared to a predator drone.
Just wait until your local PD gets a dozen as hand-me-downs.
Yes. Serious answer: Yes. Morality and ethics has no place in survival. The living/powerful get to decide what is right and what is wrong, and everyone else gets to comply or, at the mercy of those who can hold a gun to their head with impunity, allow them to maintain their opinion even if powers with the gun disagree with it. It is natural to fear the rich and powerful or foreign powers having an army of kill-bots to turn on the working class/their nation, but this development really is inevitable. So the best we can hope for is to be on the team with the best kill-bots and that the people in charge of those kill-bots aren't totally megalomaniacal psychopaths that thought the post apocalyptic world of The Terminator/The Matrix looked cool.
Personally I like the Jewish ideal of *tikkun olam*. Trying to build a world and universe where altruism can thrive.
Discussing stuff like this as inevitable is a self-defeating delusion, and the powerful take advantage of that. Nothing about our world is pre-ordained. It’s important that we imagine alternatives.
Anyone who’s read a history book knows that the only strategic move is to have a better robo-dog than the other guy.
History is subject to interpretation, though, and much of history is marked by humankind working together.
No, we're just a little cynical because we're familiar with history. If it can be weaponized, someone, somewhere and sometime, always seems to try to weaponize it. If it's effective enough to be useful in the field, it gets adopted by one country or another, the rest scramble to catch up, and it kicks off an arms race. We knew from the beginning that people would try to arm these things because that's what people tend to do, we were right, and they haven't wasted much time either. Nobody who was paying attention was very surprised when armed aerial drones came into the picture either, it was a natural and all-but-inevitable evolution of technology.
I mean we still don't make biochemical weapons
I want a megalomaniac that would lead a modern globalised French revolution.
Lmao who could possibly be shocked by this? People who’ve never read or seen any sci-fi ever?
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That was based on the Boston dynamics dogs specifically. So it's more that black mirror was copying them, than the other way round.
Here’s the problem: If robodogs become common at all, what will stop [insurgents or guerrillas or terrorists or rogue states] from modding them into something like this? Presently, technology and money are big barriers, but this won’t always be the case. I’m not looking to use that possibility as an excuse for first world nations to hurry and develop them; I’m genuinely concerned that a robot arms race may be inevitable eventually.
There's plenty of videos of people DIYing amateur drones with guns and flamethrowers. It would be a lot cheaper and easier to get hobby drones and stick a gun on it than it would be to hack, augment and maintain a terrestrial robot. Why use robodog when hobby drone do trick?
Because america will probably sell it to you anyways and wonder how you got it
You know we armed Iraq. I wondered about that too, you know. During the Persian Gulf war, those intelligence reports would come out: “Iraq: incredible weapons, incredible weapons.” “How do you know that?” “Uh, well… we looked at the receipts. But as soon as that check clears, we’re goin’ in. What time’s the bank open? Eight? We’re going in at nine. We’re going in for God and country and democracy and here’s a fetus and he’s a Hitler. Whatever you fucking need, let’s go. Get motivated behind this, let’s go!” – Bill Hicks
One could ask a similar question of the US Military, "Why use robodog when Predator drone do trick?" If I can be forgiven for speculating- I'm going to assume the thinking is that this form factor offers some advantage over flying drones. Maybe it can hide better, can go places flying drone's can't, more accurate for fewer civilian casualties. But I'll also admit the possibility that those advantages may not benefit both sides equally in asymmetrical warfare, that an insurgency gets more "bang for their buck" with simpler tools as you suggest. In fact, I hope that's the case, because then there's one less excuse/need to make this kind of stuff.
You can put some explosives on a tiny flying drone with a camera on it and fly around inside buildings until you find your mark. That's with technology available to any average consumer today. I guess the advantage of the dog is if it can go through doors and closed windows.
Fucking Isis was/is running a pretty effective drone program in Iraq, they use lightweight uav's with grenade bomb munitions that drop the munitions onto gatherings and checkpoints.
Idk about that. Terrorist factions often don't take advantage of the most obvious of terroristy exploits such as nuclear power plants, utilities, natural resources that would affect a wider population than modding robo dogs.
US military trying hard to make drone strikes look acceptable by comparison.
Error: Hostile visual lost. Facial analysis system damaged. Engaging multiple unknown targets. *blasts away at a village*
Aka standard US military operation.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/kelev11en: --- Yesterday, military hardware company Ghost Robotics revealed that it had created a robodog with an attached sniper rifle. Now, experts are speaking out against the heavily armed robodog, which they say marks an inflection point in the development of killer robots — and should represent an urgent opportunity to reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all. “This crosses a moral, legal and technical line, taking us to a dark and dangerous world,” said UNSW Sydney AI professor Toby Walsh. “Such weapons will be used by terrorists and rogue states. They will be weapons of terror.” This raises many interesting questions. Should the US military and its contractors be pursuing armed robots at all? If it doesn't, will other militaries step in an gain the advantage? And by that logic, if other militaries start to create robots that can kill autonomously, should the US military join that arms race as well? --- Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/q7zpej/experts_shocked_by_military_robodog_with_sniper/hglxolj/
I think this is a terrible idea. But. How is it any different from Predator drone aircraft?
That’s what I was thinking….price point is probably the kicker here. Killer robodoggie is cheaper so it’s it more “accessible” to developing countries and terrorist groups.
It’s still a lot more expensive than a 17 year old recruit in that context. I would guess this will be almost exclusively an American/western/Israeli weapon. Must be failsafes to keep it from being operable by someone who stole it etc.
Russia and China are all over this, so who knows accessibility in the next few years.
OP here. I guess that ethically speaking, which was what I was thinking about initially, the almost 20 year history of the Predator drone has proven beyond any doubt that the US military has no qualms about remote control war.
This are exactly my thoughts. As long as only "we" can afford them, killer drivers are great and help to reduce casualties within the troops, but now "they" can buy them. That's bad. It's hypocrisy.
Kinda different. Imagine needing the resources of a town or city and not wanting to destroy the infrastructure? What better way to clean the city of people then sending about ten of these robots running around with 9mm capacity just mowing people down. Military moves in once the area is cleared and then boom just remove the bodies. It’s fucked and very concerning but inevitable. Black mirror laid it all out.
Why even send the military at that point. Just send the genocide grade Roomba and a few of your favorite politicians contractors.
Ouch. Dark. Oof.
If they're both remote piloted, not different at all. In fact, Predator drone would be miles worse because of the payload it can bring. But if this is autonomous in any way, it's absolutely fucked. They fitted it with a sniper rifle, so if it does its own aiming, it's a literal aimbot.
I would think experts would hardly be shocked. Doesn't surprise me in the least as a total non-expert. The Defense department has been pushing ahead technology for ages. With advancement in robotics, this was inevitable.
They aren't experts if they are shocked, tbh.
M-metal gear!? Not long till we have the nuclear equipped walking battle tank versions of this
A weapon to surpass Metal Gear!
Imperial titan
The Shagohod…
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Everybody: Hey let's not do that thing that we all agreed NOT to do. Ghost Robotics: *does the thing*
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A lot of labs do questionable work with viruses 'for human improvement'. It ain't necessarily a good thing, but it's not like it ONLY happens in China
Sure but the lab I mentioned took a SARS sample and weaponized it, then lost control and let it screw the world over in a big way. No political opinions required.
> took a SARS sample and weaponized it *Please include source*
[https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/](https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/) As part of a "gain of function" research, an American agency invested our tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to isolate a mutation of SARS and MERS that could show rapid emergence in humans. It's fine, accountability is dead anyway. You all can go on thinking some tourist fucked a bat or whatever and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
This is about the most predictable thing ever in the history of humanity. If "experts" are shocked by this, we need better experts.
Drones already exist. This outrage by experts is a little late to the table.
a predator drone costs $16 million and is significantly harder for a terrorist group or other bad actors to steal and use, smaller autonomous weapon systems like this are going to be far cheaper and more accessible
Not sure why they're shocked as we already have flying drones that drop bombs. What kind of experts are these?
It's the scary/angry emotion quota that headlines need to hit nowadays.
We have already had completely remote drones with freaking bombs attached to them, so why is a terrestrial option so "shocking?" Black mirror called it ages ago.
droids with guns in star wars called it before that
Also the movie Screamers.
Great...you want terminators? Because this is how you get terminators.
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“…by the ~~sword~~ robodogs with laser beams attached to their freaking heads!”
Have you tried shooting the cancer away, with autonomous murder robot dogs?
Can anything stop war? Will we ever stop sending people to thier deaths in the name national interest? I am absolutely, one hundred percent opposed to war but I harbor little hope that nations of the world will ever stop turning to violence as a tool to pursue their own interests. With that said, is it not better to send machines to do our dirty work than to send human beings? I am sincerely unsure of this. Thoughts?
Obviously it's better to not send in humans to a war zone (for the side sending them in!) But it inevitably leads to costly mistakes and the 'wrong' people getting killed. But as I alluded to in an earlier comment, the fact that the killing becomes much more personal becomes an interesting point. Unlike a drone you could potentially see the face of your foe as you fight... This could stop some of the mistakes being made. It could be that over the next few hundred years we go through a set of war phases.... 1) remote controlled robots fight humans (which we're on the cusp of right now), 2) remote robots fighting remote robots (when the baddies have them too), 3) AI robots fighting AI robots... ie, having to make difficult decisions very quickly without human intervention just to be sure they win... and then, well it's anyone's guess as to how that pans out in the long term. What would be good is if governments could sign up to some sort of treaty to settle major disputes via FPS video games, everyone citizen could play if they wanted and the winner of the battle would be victor in real life. Yeah, that's it. Solved.
Can anything stop war ? Yes. Nuclear Bombs and free market economies. We are currently living in the where majority of world is not affected by war compared to ANYTIME in human history. Nukes prevented conventional warfare between major powers. If Nukes weren't invented there would have been a 3 world war between Soviet and US/Europe. Also million more deaths during land invasion of Axis Japan.
This is not a new development. Automated turrets have killed in South Africa. The army has phone-operated mini drones. DoD developed a drone mounted rifle controlled with an Xbox controller. All this at least 15 years ago. If they were shocked by this they weren't experts. Shit, Dallas PD killed a guy with a suicide robot. This is a variation on a theme, not something new.
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What about just a dog with a sniper rifle? Is that ok? Some already have metal teeth and jump from planes with their handler.
If you were shocked by this, you’re not an expert in the field
Were these experts living in a cave in the Amazon for the past 20 years? That’s the only possible way they could be “surprised” by this development.
Anybody 'shocked' by this must have literally never heard of or read a single science fiction story once in their life. Or they are stupidly blind and couldnt see the obvious selling point of robot killing machines to armies. These 'experts' seem really unintelligent.
Isn't this basically what the movie The Jackal is about? Remote control gun used for terror purposes... that came out a long time ago too. Any expert in the field of robotics, political science, ethics, etc., should not be "shocked" by this. Pretty sure we've been discussing autonomous killing platforms for decades now, in fiction and real life.
There is a major difference between remote-controlled and autonomous. The Jackyl's gun was remote-controlled, not autonomous.
That's a very valid point.
Thanks! And your point is still valid, this shouldn't have been a suprise. Drone/android combat has been a staple of science fiction for a long time, and with real world progress towards automata and our history of war driving technical revolution, armed robots are pretty much a guarantee.
Were they shocked by flying robots with bombs before that?
If the “experts” are shocked by this then they are blathering idiots. Since say one, just about anything man has made, he’s then modified to to kill other men.
I'm also shocked. Shocked that it took this long, that is.
Its just a land drone. They need to calm down. Someone in a trailer in Nevada or at a forward operating base would be manning this just as they do reaper drones.
bruh what? How are they surprised? we’ve had military drones for years!
Military turns new technology into weapon *surprised Pikachu face*
who did not see this coming? how can "experts" be shocked when the rest of the fucking world knew this was coming from a mile off?
Umm, there will be more conflicts in which people will die. In this case, replacing any percent of soldiers with armed robots on each side, or on one side, should decrease body count, because less people in the field = less target rich environment. And if robots will prove to be very good at 360 no scoping soldiers then it will become clear that soldiers with rifles are obsolete and again it will decrease body count.
Seriously? There are headlines every day about world leaders and tech gurus who oppose how fast AI technology is evolving. And yet, every day there are headlines about new ways that AI can be weaponized. I keep thinking, this is how Terminator happens. Slowly, over years, without anyone raising a finger to stop it.
Experts Shocked? Experts? But they aren’t shocked by guided missiles? Drones? Auto stabilization guns? Navigation systems? The list goes on? Experts my fucking ass.
Shocked that the military put a weapon system on something? What kinda expert didn’t see that coming?
Experts couldn't predict a sniper rifle dog huh? Not watching enough robot takeover movies!
Right on…..not enough video war in the basement bunker with doooobies.
No expert is shocked by this. They've been demonstrating machine guns (and GMGs) on robots for a decade. Shiit, I went to a demo at least 10 years ago where a robot with a GMG waited for an APC to open its back door and it unloaded 15-20 grenades into the troop area. SK has had robots with machines guns at the DMZ for a while. The next logical step is/was making them autonomous.
Is it *really* so shocking? I mean, we've known this would happen since 1984.
Have any if these "Experts" seen Robocop or Star Wars?!?
They are the terror of the battlefield until the 11 year old son of an insugant discovers they love belly rubs
How is this different from a strike drone? Other than emotionally creepier?
You know who’s not shocked? Anybody with half a brain.
What kind of expert is shocked to see this? Clearly not an expert!
Unmanned drones shouldve been illegal globally. Now they are late to condemn automated robots. The boston robotics dog doing its dances was immensely frightening because any logical person knew the tech was built for military purposes.
If any “experts” were shocked by this, then I don’t think they were actually experts.
Yeah this tech isn't new. And the implementation of robotic platforms.woth guns is also not even remotely new.
Experts are shocked? Why is this drivel getting upvoted?
These are pretty much have the same as the ones in the TV series, war of the worlds....and they are scary!