[Closed] AI weaponised drones!

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So it has no way of distinguishing between target- terrorist, or target- woman with pushchair.

Not sure of the algorithm, but it was apparently very effective.

I was reminded of this

It's not exactly rise of the machines, the AI is basically the pre-loaded algorithms to follow during that mission, all they've done is follow their routines, reality is that if this was an issue, then those who programmed them are culpable, again these are Turkey based UCAVs, so may not have the same parameters as the rest of the world.

I wouldn't get too worried about this, the same technology and ability has been around for a generation, the thing that stops this occurring is rules of engagement and legal parameters covering armed conflicts and so on.

I’m not the only one who finds this slightly terrifying?

Is it more terrifying than the idea that a teenager in US military uniform sitting in texas can be controlling a drone in Afghanistan and shooting at live targets? How confident are you that an emotionally charged relatively inexperienced soldier who's spent the last 10 years playing GTA etc with no consequences has more constraint than an algorithm? I bet when the algorithm gets it wrong there are more people willing to "call it out" and support to retrain it rather than cover it up or blame the pressure of split second decision making in the heat of battle. Of course that's easy for me to say as white person who is not in an active conflict zone.

Is it more terrifying than the idea that a teenager in US military uniform sitting in texas can be controlling a drone in Afghanistan and shooting at live targets?

You have a good point, and I don't know which is better. However, a UAV with a controller seems to involve a little more infrastructure and cost than what on the face of it is essentially a fairly standard looking 4 prop drone. even removing the AI aspect, weaponizing these relatively low cost, small form and agile bits of hardware seems to be a bit of a game changer.
The possibility of formation attack on one hand may make getting the bad guys more precise, with little collateral damage, providing you trust who's making the decision on who's the bad guys.

Then you have the 'teach, press go and sit back' approach to warfare. makes life easy doesn't it. maybe we're already there with military prowess and war is 'relatively' easy, only needing ground troops to peace keep and take out individual targets. maybe the drones will remove that need for boots on the ground, saving soldiers lives. maybe. step out of line and the drone patrol will know..

genuinely interested to see where this development goes. first saw the drone formation attack stuff back in 2019 and wasn't that surprised by it. quite cool and I can see the advantages, though have we ironed out some of the issues with AI to be able to rely on it when human targets are the objective? I don't know.

The AI that allows drones to do cool things like fly in formation and position themselves against a target, is very different to the AI about classifying a target. The former is ‘universally useful’ but the latter is where the moral and ethical issues lie.