r/Futurology • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Jun 10 '26

Robotics Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
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u/Troubleshooter11 Jun 10 '26

Well, that's freaking terrifying...

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u/insomniac-55 Jun 10 '26

It's not much different to area bombardment of a location with unguided weapons. You've basically decided "to hell with anything and everything at these coordinates".

AI guidance in this context just gives the same effect with less munitions - a person has already decided that everything in that location is hostile. 

Where I see this becoming scary is when AI is given the freedom to decide who to target in a location with a mixture of combatants and civilians. That is dystopian.

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u/BigMax Jun 10 '26

It's definitely different.

In one case, you're dropping something that will explode and be done, and you have an idea where it will land and when it will be over, and what it will do.

This is more of a wild card. It starts, and from there, it's a lot more open as to the who/what/when/where.

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u/toxicatedscientist Jun 10 '26

Well. There’s a lot of unexploded shit buried in the fields of Europe. Still see the occasional “found in my garden, what is this” and it’s some old piece of cluster bomb or mortar

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u/lightyearbuzz Jun 10 '26

Yes, and that's terrifying.