Fully Autonomous Drones Have Killed Human Soldiers For the First Time
- Reference: 0183748136
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/06/11/0031209/fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time
- Source link:
> Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have [2]killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time . This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defense industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare. The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled "Terminator" drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.
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> "We tried it," says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. "It's a test. We never implemented it [more widely]." The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage "Terminator mode," in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets. "We just launch it and we know everything will be dead -- everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead," says Kokhanovskyy. "There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing... Everything it sees will be killed."
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> With no way to tell what the automated drones had seen or targeted, human-piloted drones were sent into the area after the test to manually check results. Victims included "a couple of soldiers, one truck," says Kokhanovskyy. While there is no recording of the automated drones attacking these targets, it was concluded that the drones had killed them. Kokhanovskyy says that he was not at the test personally but that it was carried out by an unnamed military unit near the cities of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar as part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive push. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions about the test or the current legal position on the use of fully autonomous weapons.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~MattSparkes
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
Could It Get Worse? (Score:3)
Oh yes. It definitely will get worse.
If it isn't already, this abomination will get pervasive. Some weak sauce AI will decide who is an enemy to be killed and execute them. What about friendly forces, civilians, animals? There will be an "acceptable" degree of error and "accidental casualties".
This is an abomination. And it will become pervasive, if it isn't already happening.
Re: (Score:2)
> There will be an "acceptable" degree of error and "accidental casualties"
How is that different from the status quo? It isn't just autonomous weapons that can kill the wrong people. Just this morning I saw an article about a US missile that accidentally killed four Indian sailors in the Gulf.
If the primary concern is around "degree of error" (and not more difficult-to-quantify concerns about morality or ethics, which are nonetheless perfectly valid), there's some parallel to the conversation around self-driving vehicles. The question shouldn't be "Is the system perfect?" but in
Re: (Score:2)
> Some weak sauce AI will decide who is an enemy
At least bots will have more training than ICE.
(As somebody else noted, old-style bombs are not good at discerning either.)
Re: (Score:2)
> At least bots will have more training than ICE.
ICE has all the training they need to carry out their mission of terrorism.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed --- ICE is trained-to-purpose. Invading border-jumpers SHOULD feel terror, from the minute they approach USA border, to the second our anti-migrant drone explodes in their face. And surely one can design an anti-personal drone to detect "enablers" & pimps with EMPATHY toward such narco-Mex mules, and also zero-in on those rabid quislings.
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> Indeed --- ICE is trained-to-purpose. Invading border-jumpers SHOULD feel terror
Get fucked, hipster shitlord.
Re: (Score:2)
This is an abomination.
The alternative is the Ukrainians just let Putin conquer them then conscript them for the next conquest. If you don't want people to defend themselves by any means necessary, you need to do the defending yourself. Are you prepared to?
Some weak sauce AI will decide who is an enemy to be killed and execute them. What about friendly forces, civilians, animals?
Probably anyone person shaped, so not animals. The drones are not long lived devices, with endurance measured in hours. There's no
Re: (Score:2)
> If it isn't already, this abomination will get pervasive.
Maybe. Ukraine apparently did this two years ago as an experiment, then decided not to continue experimenting, much less make it standard procedure.
Full autonomy was obviously one possible solution when the Russians got good at jamming drone communications. The other was switching to wired control, via kilometers-long spools of ultrathin fiberoptic cable. Ukraine has settled on the latter. This is covering the front lines with a massive spiderweb of fiberoptic cable, which is also a cost, but Ukraine
Re: Could It Get Worse? (Score:2)
You really are very naive to think these new weapons are designed to only target military targets..
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps not, but they are designed to *attempt* to only target the things they are aimed at.
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> With more advanced AI the endgame is that only justified military targets are eliminated at the highest possible speed, possibly ending the war faster. To me that is a good thing.
This is reminiscent of Richard Gatling's notion that his gun would make war so deadly that no one would be stupid enough to start one. And yet, here we are.
Re: (Score:2)
one is more expensive than the other. one is fire and forget but you can be "safer" in bunkers, the other is cheap, tracks and hunts you.
Produce 10 million of those and you are a genocide, right?
Meh... (Score:2)
I don't believe for a second that this was the first time, nor do I believe countries will hesitate to go this route when they're at war. Kamikaze drones are effectively doing the same thing. They're getting basic coordinates and turned loose.
It's a slippery slope and it's a long way down to the bottom. Buckle up.
Scary as hell (Score:3)
This should scare the hell out of most everyone, as this is really about as bad as biological warfare. Just to put some numbers in perspective, China produces around 40 million drones annually. Consider how easy it would be to produce, say, one million drones that include an explosive device. Since these drones are autonomous the usual methods of interfering with their RF, or even for fiber controlled drones, the cutting of the fiber cable by a powerful laser, will do nothing.
This is the future, and it will revolutionize warfare. Pure volume of drones can defeat anything we currently have to defend against them. You just send a swarm of drones, or a drone one after another after another spaced 10 seconds apart, until whatever they are targeting has been destroyed. 10k drones targeting the US's ports on both coasts... destroy the bulk of imports and exports. 10k drones targeting tractors and other agricultural equipment in the US's breadbasket - famine. Really, it's hard to understate what these could potentially do.
let's play global thermonuclear war (Score:2)
what side do you want?
Re: (Score:2)
lets play tic-tac-toe instead
Agreed these are scary; worse, they are ironic! (Score:2)
As one economist I read long ago wrote, business is very expensive without trust (e.g. that you can trust your long copper telephone lines used to communicate or long electric lines used to power your business will not be stolen when just sitting there unguarded). A big cost of theft or vandalism or murder (what war is essentially about) is not just the act itself but all the locks and other deterrents (including guards) people then put in to reduce such acts. Powerful tools of abundance like robots, if mis
Re: (Score:2)
I generally prefer not to give terrorists any ideas. They have their own; there's no need to help. And I assume you meant "overstate".
What's in a name.. (Score:2)
* next week *
(Major Asshole) "They fuck do you mean THEY decided to run another mission?!? And why are they killing all the.."
(Captain Obvious) "Shut the fuck up Frank..YOU were the one who decided to call it 'Terminator mode'. Practically told them what to do next."
Only humans are dumb enough to write about their own demise in science fiction, and then turn it into a global font for our species called Epitaph.
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or USA didn't try to push NATO to eastern europe countries and install interceptor missiles around russia and treat russia like the cold war was still on and causing russia to react exactly like the cold war
First time? (Score:2)
This is obviously a matter of degree, and what you feel like calling a 'drone'; but it seems implausible to say that it's a 'first'.
Something like a Mark 60 CAPTOR entered service in 1979 and is an enclosure for a torpedo that uses acoustic sensors and onboard signal processing to decide if/when to launch the torpedo which then homes in on whatever its acoustic sensors deem high priority. The human deploying the mine defines the search area since they control where it is placed; but everything after that
Huge Protection Drone market (Score:2)
Just imagine, every school child in the USA having their own protection drone, like a Killer Tinkerbelle.
Re: (Score:2)
not drone, constellation... and how to distinguish between friend or foe drone?
Not really (Score:3)
The main difference is that these things move. That adds to the level of danger, but not to the immorality. Landmines have done the autonomous killing for about 800 years now, apparently.
Re: (Score:2)
> The main difference is that these things move. That adds to the level of danger, but not to the immorality. Landmines have done the autonomous killing for about 800 years now, apparently.
The main difference is that this technology will be harder to contain. A terrorist burying a landmine in a park is plausible, but not the most practical attack.
A terrorist letting out a few of these things in a park... that is terrifying.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. We've had heat-seeking missiles, proximity fuses, radar-controlled guns for ages. They all seek and destroy targets without human control. This is just a more advanced version of the same.
In fact, AI-controlled weapons could be more moral, if they were able to make some informed choice of say whether a target was advancing or retreating.
AI drone footage publicly available (Score:2)
Saw a drone video on Dennis Davydovs (former Ukrainian commercial aviation pilot, now posting war correspondence and analysis videos multiple times per day, mostly about the Russian-Ukrainian war but also geopolitics and the US/Israel-Iran conflict) Youtube channel this morning where this clearly happened in so far that the target mode was set to auto, visible on screen, the soldier was targeted and the drone was clearly steering (using AI) towards the target until the footage stopped, presumably because th
Re: (Score:2)
Those are not the same. The drones in Davydov's video are piloted, the operator selects the target, then engages Auto mode for the terminal flight. That's designed to get around the electronic warfare stuff carried on some vehicles, and because the radio signal tends to degrade rather a lot the closer you fly to the ground.
The drones in this test are fully autonomous hunter-killers. The drone flies to the designated area, finds and selects the target, then goes after it. It offers advantages over the
Sounds like saturation bombing (Score:2)
Not thrilled, but doesn't sound much different from what has already been done in wars too often. Make everything here dead, rather than asking the AI to decide who to kill and who is not a "legitimate" war target.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good way of framing it.
Certainly preferable to just fire bombing an entire city.
Re:Why Are We (the UK) Helping Ukraine? (Score:5, Interesting)
Striking production facilities, military personnel and supply lines in an invaders own territory is absolutely fair game. Collateral damage is sadly unavoidable. Not all drones will reach their targets, some targets will be based on invalid intel, and civilians might come in harms way as a result. That's a far cry from Russia's intentional bombardment of civilians and related infrastructure, though. One is a war crime, the other is not.
Considering reports now are that Russia's finally on the back foot, it seems Ukraine is doing what it needs to do. If they were wasting munitions on apartment complexes instead of strategic targets, that would not be the case.
Re: Why Are We (the UK) Helping Ukraine? (Score:2)
Compared to America, you really didn't.
Re: (Score:2)
I have no idea what you're trying to comment on. Did you click reply on the wrong post?
Re: Why Are We (the UK) Helping Ukraine? (Score:2)
I'm sorry to say this, but Ukraine has targeted many plain civilian targets too (not to mention, at least at the start of the war, positioning their weapons/armories in or near hospitals/schools).
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It's a war, and if Russia has been doing it, Ukraine can't be expected to play by different rules. And I say this as someone partly sympathetic to the war Russia had been treated by the West after the Cold War
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That may be true, but I have seen no evidence this is a routine thing (or a thing at all) like it seems to be for Russia. So far no Ukrainians have been indicted for such war crimes, whereas multiple Russians have been.
There's also the optics of it. If it were to be discovered that Ukraine's e.g. intentionally leveling residential areas around Moscow, support would instantly dry out. It makes no sense for Ukraine to waste ammunition on targets that hold no military value. It would accomplish nothing _and_ t
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Once the students and teachers are sent home, schools can make great military bases. They're usually sturdy, have plenty of space for storage and barracks, built-in comms, good visibility on approaches...
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Collateral damage is sadly unavoidable.
Remember that when you see the next Ukrainian news that Russia bombed a random civilian building ... maybe that were not the target, that surely is not disclosed to not help the other side, but simply a collateral damage
That's a far cry from Russia's intentional bombardment of civilians and related infrastructure, though.
so who do you know that is "intentional bombardment"? you get that info from Ukrainian news (not saying those are false, notice) that of cour
Re: (Score:2)
Collateral damage is sadly unavoidable.
Remember that when you see the next Ukrainian news that Russia bombed a random civilian building ... maybe that were not the target, that surely is not disclosed to not help the other side, but simply a collateral damage
I have no doubt that some of Russia's damage to civilian structures is accidental. I also have no doubt that the majority of it is intentional. There are currently 6 officials wanted by the ICC for war crimes in the Russia-Ukraine war, all
Re: (Score:2)
A typical news story from Ukraine is "Russia launches 900 missiles and drones. One person killed."
Or "Ukraine launches sixteen drones at a girl's school in Donbas and kills a dozen schoolgirls."
If Russia wanted to kill civilians, Ukraine would look like Gaza. Israel killed more Gazans in one night than both sides have killed civilians during four years of war in Ukraine.
Also, remember that NATO pushed Ukraine to start having civilians manufacture drones in their homes. That immediately makes them legitimate
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war is bad for both sides,
Well, it's all relative isn't it? Ukrainians on the whole think it's a better option than not fighting and becoming part of Russia.
this war should never have started
Russia should never have started the war. It didn't "just start" all by itself.
and while both sides think they are winning, it will sadly continue.
I don't know if Ukraine believe they are winning but they probably do believe correctly that they're stopping Russia taking all of Ukraine. Should they just stop?
Re: (Score:2)
> Collateral damage is sadly unavoidable. Remember that when you see the next Ukrainian news that Russia bombed a random civilian building .. maybe that were not the target
No. Invaders don't get the benefit of the doubt.
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Read about Bucha. As another comment says, the invader doesn't get the benefit of the doubt. Then read again about Bucha. Perhaps about Mariupol. Thank you.
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If an invading army has been running genocidal ethnic cleansing on your own soil, then I'd argue that the gloves are off.
Imagine if , say, mexico invaded the united states (Hear me out, its a hypothetical). Would you be offended if the US responded with strikes on mexico? No you would not.
How is this different? Evil can not be tolerated. Ukraine has every right in the world to do whatever it takes, to defend her citizens, including retaliatory strikes.
Re: (Score:2)
well, USA invaded many countries already... and them do war crimes in name of self defense, because the other side had the dare of picking weapons!! Depending of the side, there will be always some kind of excuse to justify why it was "needed"
war crimes are still war crimes, people find whatever they need as a excuse. Sure, one side is more blamed than the other, but it should never be used to justify any war crime
Re:Why Are We (the UK) Helping Ukraine? (Score:4, Informative)
During WW2 why did the UK bomb Germany? I mean why didn't it just defend itself?
Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine can hit any military target inside Russia in order to make Russia stop fighting. This is part of defense. Bombing oil refineries, weapons factories and such is a perfectly valid thing to do.Even temporarily taking territory from Russia (that belonged to Russia in 2013) is acceptable. Russia can stop this war at any time - just withdraw its troops from Ukraine and that will be it.
Or do you think that Russia should be allowed to hit targets inside Ukraine, but Ukraine should not be allowed to hit targets inside Russia? Russia seems to think so.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and Russia deliberately targetting train stations, hospitals, maternity hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, churches, and a whole host of civilian sites is perfectly good.
If you're a soldier invading someone else's country, you should expect that country wil do whatever it takes to repel you. You're on their territory. Killing you is their job. Striking anything that supports the war effort has been done for centuries. You think the Allies didn't bomb German factories, oil depots, railheads, or oth
Re:Why Are We (the UK) Helping Ukraine? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I've never subscribed to the ideology that Russia was the sole villain in this war, the idea of tying Kyiv's hands in fighting the war against the Russians baffled me. Either give them unconditional support, and let them fight it however they see fit, or don't support them at all. I daresay Ukraine might have done a lot better had they mercilessly hit Moscow - maybe demolished the main Kremlin Necropolis, where major Soviet leaders from Stalin to Brezhnev are buried, and which has a spot prepared for Putin as well. What was Putin going to do in response - launch nukes at Kyiv?
However, now the Russian war effort is dying down, as they're running out of people to recruit in all the other territories outside Moscow & St Petersburg. It looks pretty reminiscent of WWI, when the war effort completely drained the Russians and caused the Soviet revolution. This time, instead of the CPRF, what is more likely to happen would be Russia simply coming apart at the seams and disintegrating. The entire geography of North Eurasia would look pretty unrecognizable
Re: (Score:2)
> While I've never subscribed to the ideology that Russia was the sole villain in this war, the idea of tying Kyiv's hands in fighting the war against the Russians baffled me.
Ukraine lost phase 1 of the war in 2022. There was no way they could continue to fight on their own, which is why Zelensky was working on a peace deal with Russia.
NATO them promised to send weapons and satellite comms and intelligence to Ukraine and turned this into a proxy war. NATO countries want to be able to fight Russia but don
Re: (Score:2)
As soon as Russian soldiers entered Ukraine, all of Russia became a fair target. Moreover, necessary targets. Anything one can do to disrupt the other side's ability to make war is absolutely necessary.
If someone is trying to murder you, it is both necessary and inevitable that you will do anything you can to stop them. You will fight dirty. You must, or you will die.
Re: (Score:2)
> First we were told that Ukraine needed to DEFEND her territory.
As long as Russia is attacking Ukraine, attacking Russia is defending Ukraine.
This is not complicated.
All Russia has to do for the attacks on Russia to stop is stop attacking Ukraine.
> Or is it just me, and going on the offensive against Russia is perfectly OK?
It's not just you. There's lots of other clowns just like you who think allowing Russia to continue attacking Ukraine is perfectly OK.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong,
The clowns are the ones screaming about Iran, while posting their stupid I stand with Ukraine stickers.
For Ukraine allowing Russia to continue attacking Ukraine is not ok, for everyone else, it is irrelevant because Russia is basically irrelevant.
Every bit of American treasure spent in Ukraine is WASTE if you're an American. Iran you can argue at least they have been interfering without other FP objectives.
Re:Why Is the West Helping Ukraine? (Score:2)
I agree w/ you, but the mistakes we've made have spanned multiple presidents since 1992. While Clinton did what he could to befriend Yeltsin, his wars against Serbia did serve to alienate the Russians, who have historically been pro-Serb. Also, contrary to James Baker's verbal guarantees to Mikhail Gorbachev (which the latter should have insisted on in writing , NATO kept expanding Eastwards, going right upto the Baltics. But when the Kremlin too wanted to join this club, they were declined - both by Clin
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well said, bravo!
Re: (Score:3)
You gave Ukraine security guarantees in exchange for Ukraine not keeping the nuclear weapons that were on its soil after the breakup of the USSR. There's an argument that the real mistake the US (and the UK and France) made was not getting involved in 2014 when Russia decided to unilaterally revoke Stalin's transfer of the Crimea to the Ukraine. The resulting lesson, which is also the lesson that the current war in Iran teaches, is that a state should do all it can to acquire nuclear weapons and then not gi
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You might want to read this. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
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The only way I see for the US to be better off with a Russian victory is that there would be less competition for American grain farmers. Russia has no interest in being friendly with the West, the resentment is too deeply ingrained (Russia wanted to be European, Europe said no, Russia said screw you we don't want to be European anyway).
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> I have opposed US involvement in Ukraine from the beginning.
So you'd be okay with Russia completely taking control of Ukraine? And if Putin decides he wants Poland next, then what? Still okay?
> It is a conflict that does not involve us, does not need to involve us and arguably American farmers and exporters would be better served by a Russian victory
Just be honest, you are okay with Russia taking Ukraine by force because you want the U.S. to be able to take what its psychopathic leader wants to take by force. Trump's support for Ukraine has been so lukewarm it is obvious he wants to divide up the world to be controlled by four superpowers - the U.S., the EU, Russia, and China. He's mostly kept the U.S. out of Ukraine becau
Re: (Score:3)
> A war.
Corrected that for you.
Re: (Score:2)
correct, all wars are criminal
Re: Oh look. (Score:3)
No, it's a crime as it still isn't allowed to use autonomous drones with weapons. Just like certain other weapons like mustard gas. According to you there is no such thing was 'war crime'.
Re: (Score:2)
Please, all of WW2 was a war crime. We're just pretending we are more civilized at the moment. If we were at "total" war, Iran wouldn't exist anymore. Would be super easy to destroy all their infrastructure, power grid, refineries, desalination plants and on. We've collectively decided those are "unfair targets" and haven't done it.
Re: (Score:2)
We decided "I really really don't want x to happen to me, so I won't x someone else." And then we agreed that x will be categorized as "terrorism" instead of "war."
Then recently (yesterday?) we Americans apparently changed our mind about whether or not it would be ok if Iran (or anyone else) blew up America's civilian water supply infrastructure, no big deal, so we're doing that now, telling the whole world that it's acceptable. It's just war, what can ya do?
Re: Oh look. (Score:2)
Which Geneva convention or other treaty specifies this?
And also, which Geneva convention or other treaty has Russia not violated? And I mean like within the last 8 minutes.
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Why do you think it isn't allowed? There is no treaty banning it, like there is for chemical and biological weapons.
There are two ways to make something a war crime. Domestic law and international treaty. If Ukraine doesn't have a law banning the use of autonomous killbots, then because there is no treaty banning the practice it is not a crime.
But yes, one could easily argue that, at least as a practical matter, war crimes don't actually exist. They are a legal fiction intended to restrain combatan
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Killing people invading your country is a war crime? You Russians really are drunks.
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first, there are still humans in both side that are mostly forced to be there
second, you already have many south america soldiers in both sides, trying to earn some money, like in any way
third, YES, even killing a enemy soldiers can be a WAR CRIME. a disabled (heavy wounded) or captured soldiers, medics and civilians must not be killed. They may not be innocent, but it is still murder
Sadly when a war crime is committed, the other side usually also start to do the same. That only helps to increase the hate b
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I don't think that's a well defined term. Historically you can only figure out which actions were war crimes after one side has won, and decided to set up trials. The rest of the time different sides pick different actions.
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Not to my knowledge. It may be immoral, but there isn't a treaty banning the practice. And I'm guessing it isn't illegal in Ukraine.
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I don't see anything immoral about killing people who are invading your country.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. Not even one little bit. There are [1]plenty of concerns [hrw.org], mostly about the fact that these things kill indiscriminately, opening the possibility for this weapon to commit a war crime (even when the operator had no such intention). But that doesn't make them a war crime in themselves.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/04/28/a-hazard-to-human-rights/autonomous-weapons-systems-and-digital-decision-making
Citation needed (Score:2)
Asserting a war crime is making a statement of legal fact.
What law or laws were violated? The burden of proof for an assertion is on the person makinig it.
Conventional bombardment without precision munitions requires area bombardment for effect. AI can find and end opponents much more precisely.
Re: Oh look. (Score:3)
Ukraine is a genocide too,
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Ukraine wouldn't press the button for the same reason Russia won't press the button, it prevents them from capturing anything useful after the mushroom cloud.
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it's so horrible the Palestinians have walked away from every peace agreement ever, and rejected a Palestinians state instead opting for continued bombing of the Israelis, because that's what victims always do. Just ask the Kurds: how many times they turned their nose up at the possibility of having Kurdistan? Yeah never.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I recall things being relatively stable until a certain stable genius found Iran on the map. But then again it all goes back to oil. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
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And those actions of Palestinian soldiers justify Israel's killing their children and other random people? Sounds awfully antisemetic to me.
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We’ve sent hundreds of billions dollars to a country with a population of 10 million. Do the math on that one.
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(Disclaimer: I'm an Israeli, though rather opposed to the genocidal attempt at ethnic cleansing currently being conducted by my country. That said, keep that in mind in terms of potential bias in this post).
It's not precisely correct to say that the US has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to Israel. it's a bit more of a 'closed ecosystem' than that -- the vast majority of financial support the US has provided Israel has been in the form of weapons and munitions, which Israel has then purchased fro
Re:Oh look. (Score:4, Insightful)
70+ years of "Palestinians" (a term invented by the Egyptian Yasser Arafat) refusing to accept the existence of Israel and trying to exterminate the Jews. The dead-enders who refused to become Israeli citizens (as very many of their fellows did) and tried to eradicate Israel the day it was formed. And then again. And then again. And then again...
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Refusing to accept... yeah, it's kind of hard to accept someone bulldozing your house and being told "You work for me now." I'm not sure I could accept that either. I might even want to kill someone.
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> 70+ years of "Palestinians" (a term invented by the Egyptian Yasser Arafat) refusing to accept the existence of Israel and trying to exterminate the Jews. The dead-enders who refused to become Israeli citizens (as very many of their fellows did) and tried to eradicate Israel the day it was formed. And then again. And then again. And then again...
What a shock that the "Palestinians" were unwilling to allow a different ethnoreligious group to move into their homeland, and give them the choice of being second class citizens or expelled from their territory entirely.
Who could imagine that they would have reacted exactly the same as literally every other group of people on the planet?!?
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Nope, the term was not invented by Arafat, it's at least 2,5k years old. You sound like someone loony who thinks that one (1) passing reference to a guy named "David" in a secular text warrants anything. Maybe you should also re-check your other "facts"?
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that is the problem, "everything in the area will be killed", can be a soldiers, can be a civilian, a kid, a decoy, a friendly, it can go out of the pretended delimited area and everything you use, the other side will also use... Gas was a initial surprise, it was quickly used by both sides... Planes were safe and friendly until they started to carry weapons and bombs by both sides... tanks were important until both sides started to use them... drones were efective but now both side have them
What make you t
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I don't sit around worrying about what "could be". That's a pure waste of time. We just hope for the best and try and keep our wars off America soil. Terrorist attacks? We're as likely to have a homegrown terrorist attack as a foreign born. Nothing to lose sleep over, I assure you. It's going to happen regardless of your worrying.
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For now, people can worry about what type of weapons to use and whether or not certain types should be banned.
But in the future, all the debates will be about will be " how do we pick just the right grid squares in which to Kill All Humans?"
Re: (Score:2)
> I used to support the Ukrainian, but this is a step too far. [1]https://www.stopkillerrobots.o... [stopkillerrobots.org]
Mine is the opposite. While I don't support the Russians per se, I do believe that a combination of geopolitical errors since the 90s contributed to the start of this war, which is why I don't look at Russia as the sole villains, even though Ukraine is sometimes unfairly tarnished
That said, this is a war, so even if the Ukrainians deliberately unleashed drones to kill Russian troops, that's something to be expected: it's only a crime if it's done in peacetime. Asimov's laws don't apply here: his laws w
[1] https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/
Re: (Score:2)
Asimov's laws don't matter. They were and are literary devices to drive his stories.
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Which one? Pavel? Maryska? Dimitro?
Re: a step too far (Score:2)
Yeah, for supporting Ukraine at all.... (Supporting Russia is also not good).
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you sir, are blind, war is never good
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As other comments have pointed out, there have been killbots since the 1970s.
This is just a cheaper killbot. That's news, it might even be a paradigm shift, but it's not a fundamental difference in what is occurring.
Total horseshit (Score:2)
Drones have been killing human soldiers since the early months of the ukraine war.
Re:Total horseshit (Score:4)
This news item is a somewhat belated "first time." If you read even the quoted part you would've seen that this particular "first time" was actually more than two years back.
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Fully autonomous drones?
Or drones controlled by humans?
Because there is a subtle difference.
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I think there's still a subtle difference. These drones are not selecting targets. Their mission is "kill all humans in this defined area" - they make no distinction between friend and foe, or between combatant and civilian. "Everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead". The human setting the target area is responsible for ensuring that the area doesn't contain illegal targets. Which isn't that different to dropping a bomb on the area.
A truly autonomous drone would identify targ
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I think it was even more primitive than that. It just shot at anything that moved. That'll why no observer drones were sent with it.
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That doesn't seem any different to some missiles. For example, Russia has the P-700 Granit anti-ship missile, which can be fired in a swarm. They claim that the swarm then selects on missile to pop up and search for targets, prioritizing them based on some criteria (probably size), and then communicating the information to the other missiles.
While there is some question as to how well this actually works, they are not thought to have any way to differentiating friendly or civilian ships. They just kill what
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wrong
heavy wounded solders, captured soldiers (both sides), medical team, any left behind or running civilian, any retreating friendly
and if Ukraine use them, what make you think that Russia will not start using them too... and them Ukraine will complain they are inhuman and are killing innocents, because yes, they are really inhuman killing machines
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How does it matter? The job of those drones is to kill Russians. Whether they're asked to do that by humans, or do that by using their own AI, is immaterial. They're still doing the job their owners want them to do
Like others have noted, Putin can end this by ending the war