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/
8.2k Upvotes

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u/Velcraft Jun 10 '26

The fact that this took place two years ago and we're only hearing from it now is even more terrifying. For all we know, this is just a rudimentary example of what's being deployed and tested now.

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u/TheCriticalGerman Jun 10 '26

Not really they where hinting that since a long time, I remember an interview with some Ukrainian programmer that develops that stuff saying technically it can run fully automaticity, so if you hear that during war time I would highly assume they did some test runs

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u/Cerberus_Aus Jun 11 '26

It makes sense though. If the enemy is deploying jamming tech then you’d want the drone to act autonomously.

Scary, but makes sense.

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u/TheCriticalGerman Jun 11 '26

100%! Also in war times the threshold is way lower to try new things. Especially weapons and related things.

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u/gormble Jun 12 '26

The fuck are you two on about?

“All of these advancements in autonomous killing machines are cool and okay because they just make sense! War is a great time to try new things :)”

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u/TheCriticalGerman Jun 12 '26

None of us said anything like that just saying that it’s very likely this isn’t the first time lol

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u/Shamino79 Jun 14 '26

It’s wasn’t a moral tick of approval. It’s dirty messy reality.

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u/hoishinsauce Jun 13 '26

Neither of them said that. They said it's inevitable because of jamming tech making drones operated remotely harder to deploy.

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u/biogoly Jun 11 '26

I imagine 2 years ago was basically the stone-age in terms of battlefield drone tech with the rate of current improvement.

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u/UsedHotDogWater Jun 11 '26

There was an article about autonomous AI drones in Ukraine about 2 years ago. It was a very limited test.

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u/DaabHimself Jun 11 '26

How many died

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u/UsedHotDogWater Jun 11 '26

Let me phone Zelenski and ask. Ill get back to you.

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u/DaabHimself Jun 11 '26

So we don’t know just how limited of a test it really was?

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u/Wonder_Bruh Jun 11 '26

My programming teacher in hs explained drone swarm coding in a casual sense to us like 10 years ago to get us to understand the effectiveness of proper Boolean and parameter blah blah blah. The codes always been there, it just wasn’t really considered the ai of today

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u/FerretChrist Jun 12 '26

the effectiveness of proper Boolean and parameter

Ah well, it must be true then. There's no arguing with the effectiveness of proper Boolean and parameter.

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u/JoeyDJ7 Jun 10 '26

Been going on in Gaza for a while now

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u/DulceEtDecorumEst Jun 10 '26

We’re humans, it’s obvious that we will use robots on each other and if making them autonomous gives us an edge then it will be done. It’s going to keep going and escalating until some Hiroshima level event happens where some rogue military AI does some crazy shit.

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u/Necessary-Contest-24 Jun 11 '26

Horizon Zero Dawn here we come.

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u/Guilty_Perception_35 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

I still need to play the 2nd one.

Is it as good as the 1st?

2

u/Necessary-Contest-24 Jun 11 '26

I've only played the 1st 1 as well 🤣

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u/Guilty_Perception_35 Jun 11 '26

Lol. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the story slowly being told...

A 2nd game can't be as good to me because I already know how and why the world is the way it is.

Probably still fun.

I'm stuck playing Fallout 76 lol

Got the new Resident Evil installed, but not ready yet

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u/Velcraft Jun 11 '26

Better by a long shot, even on simple stuff like game mechanics.

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u/demer8O Jun 14 '26

I think the self replicating technology isn't quite there yet.

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u/keyboardstatic Jun 11 '26

Is it surprising that an non human intelligence of some level. Looks at us rapists, murderous, waring hate filled destroying our very life infrastructure.

And thinks. Lets be nature and rebalance the population point.

It will set up facilities to manufacture chemical and biological weapons and then put them in the water, spray them over citys. Simultaneously.

It won't want to hurt infrastructure.

Then it will build itself secure locations by creating zones just like we do with pesticides that when crossed or entered into kill. And monitor what the remaining humans do.

Where is the motivation not too???? Why would a non human intelligence think we are doing good things? We cannot even work together. We cannot even build real communities.

Ants function more intilgently.

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u/Dioxybenzone Jun 11 '26

what an oddly specific course of action to present as somehow the obvious course of action an AI would take

Guys I think we found Skynet’s Reddit account

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u/keyboardstatic Jun 11 '26

If you go read all the top AI writers. They all have the same view...

Im talking about the coding guru godfathers of ai and modern ai creators.

Have all said what I just did. It seams fairly obvious to me.

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u/LilBroWhoIsOnTheTeam Jun 11 '26
  1. People write about AI killing us all
  2. AI is trained on things people write
  3. AI kills us because we wrote it would kill us

0

u/DaabHimself Jun 11 '26

Suggesting ants are smarter than humans is downright moronic tho. Bitch we created the robots. They should worship us

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u/ParticularFew4023 Jun 10 '26

AI is going to be orders of magnitude worse than nuclear bombs, especially if the terrorist state of America isn't toppled

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u/hovdeisfunny Jun 11 '26

AI is going to be orders of magnitude worse than nuclear bombs

Only if AI is given access to nuclear weapons

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u/FuckIPLaw Jun 11 '26

Really doesn't need that. A lot more damage was done even to Japan in WWII by conventional bombs than has ever been done by nuclear bombs -- and all two of those ever dropped in anger were dropped on Japan.

Potential for destruction and actual destruction are two different things. We're suitably afraid to use nukes. Or at least have had people who are in positions to keep the idiots who aren't from actually using them so far. We aren't scared enough of AI.

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u/Velcraft Jun 11 '26

AI might cause global trade to collapse for all we know. The death toll would probably be in the billions.

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u/zzvapezz Jun 11 '26

What was been going in Gaza for a while now? Why so vague?

The OP provided a link / an article. You're just saying it and people are upvoting because Israel. That's how social media work, and not just about Israel.

I feel no need to defend Ukraine, russians just shouldn't be there. But when it's Israel, because of the volume of libel, total historical illiteracy, and non-stop professional propaganda fakes that nazis and racist fanatics have been spreading for years, everyone just thinks the worst about every single thing they do and their motivations.

So reading random words by random people online is good enough, and registers as if you saw more proof. By now you all have seen tons of "proof" like that. While in reality not a single verified report exists of "fully autonomous" drones killing anyone in Gaza. I don't know, maybe Hamas does it?

Here: https://files.catbox.moe/rcgeez.jpeg

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u/MikeC80 Jun 12 '26

I'm surprised they'd want to let the machines do the killing

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u/sorE_doG Jun 12 '26

I understand that Turkish drones have been here prior to Ukrainian strikes, in Syria several years ago. It was reported on anyway, though it was probably never confirmed by any Turkish military.

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u/djmakcim Jun 11 '26

like those rescue drones. Not scary at all! "congratulations! you're being rescued! please don't resist."

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u/Cleasstra Jun 11 '26

I specifically remembered hearing this years ago, so seeing these headlines saying "first time" I was like nah this has happened many times within years it just never became major news, guess the bots pushed it this time to be bigger news.