"Comrade 'Skynet,' You Say?"

Moscow tests battlefield robots, armed with machine guns.

Now all they need is a device to permit automated nuclear... oh, right. They've had one all along.

Well, we'll just wait for AI, then. I'm sure it'll go fine.

8 comments:

Eric Blair said...

I've been reading about automated drones for a while now, with "kill boxes" where the drone gets to fire on any target it identifies in the box.

This isn't much different, and if it is for the strategic rocket forces, like the article says, then this isn't much more than an automated sentry. I'm sure it has cameras and such hooked up so that humans can see what it is doing, and perhaps control it if desired.

Ymar Sakar said...

Watch some cracker use a stuxnet on it.

raven said...

Although this Russian system looks like a simple mobile sentry gun, true autonomous war robots will really be a gamechanger. Especially as they are unlikely to remain the province of nation states. Even the simple remote controlled vehicles commonly called drones are a new threat, when combined with new battery tech, optics and computerized control systems.

Neal Stephenson's novel "The Diamond Age" has the air filled with nano drones in a constant unseen battle for supremacy.

E Hines said...

Reminds me of a sci-fi short (wish I could recall the name or the author) wherein drones were developed and deployed as robot cops--they were programmed to sniff out violent crimes and preempt them by...neutralizing...the perps planning them.

The drones worked too well, but were too indiscriminate, so "better" drones were developed and deployed to neutralize the first gen drones. They were too indiscriminate, too, so.... By the end of the story, the latest generation of drones were killing all the predators on Earth--including homo sapiens for plotting too much violence.

Eric Hines

Assistant Village Idiot said...

On any threat detection, it's always a balance of how many false positives one is willing to endure. It is a big problem in mental health. We actually can identify suicidal and homicidal people fairly well - that is, have not many slip through. The problem is, the false positves are about ten times that number, and we don't want a society where we lock up that many people who aren't dangerous.

Grim said...

That's a good point, AVI. I'd devote myself to destroying a successful system such as you describe, which probably means I'm on your list somewhere.

Ymar Sakar said...

You're not nearly paranoid enough to qualify for such a list, Grim. You'll have to improve your stats on that matter before hand.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

In general, I don't think there's much of a list on any of these things. They just make sure they hire cats, who just naturally catch mice.

If the people in power have the Right Attitudes, lists become extraneous. Because they are also incriminating, they become obsolete. Good Trotskyite reasoning.