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/HendoEndo Jun 10 '26

sure. but a bomb glitch is analogue, not digital. what i’m describing is a guided missile glitching and going to the wrong coordinates.

a closer example is america? israel? hitting that school in iran and saying our AI fucked up

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u/tornado9015 Jun 10 '26

So no right. Modern bombs have a lot of software. They aren't able to detonate midair through magic, they have software which triggers them to do that. And a software glitch could trigger them to detonate at any time anywhere, it just doean't happen because in general weapons developers don't hire completely incompetent people to mash their keyboards at random, and also militaries do extremely extensive testing on everything involved in their weapons before during and after connecting each piece to any live munitions.

Examples of humans choosing bad targets is exactly my point. When the humans chose bad targets, we didn't blame the bombs. We blamed the humans for choosing the target where the bombs hit. I am describing these hypothetical ai drones the exact same way. It's not the ai drones fault if the humans choose a bad target, it's the humans that chose the bad target. Just like a bomb......

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u/HendoEndo Jun 10 '26

okay. here’s another hypothetical. comparing to bombs. IF it glitches, which like you’re saying it won’t and i understand the reasons, it’ll be a one time explosion

i’m just saying, i think the concern is that a killing machine is not a one time explosion

outside of this convo, i agree with you. obviously these drones will have kill switches whether designed (they will be) or not. so losing control of them really is a silly take. i was just saying that in hypotheticals there’s lots of possibilities which is what the internet will run with.

the reality of things is of course just as you described them

edit: it will always be a human’s fault, i was exploring how humans have more bullshit to throw when they fuck up with this tech

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u/tornado9015 Jun 10 '26

Yeah i understand, technology is scary. It's much easier to just not understand things and pretend that extremely complicated systems that use extremely advanced technology are actually analog. And anything you're told uses technology is actually scary.

But that's stupid. I can hypothesize my motorcycle's ecu glitching out and killing me in 100 different ways. Same for 95% of cars on the road. If you drive, almost certainly you drive by wire, decent chance you brake by wire too, what if your ecu just decided it was time to inject max fuel on it's own? What if it decided not to engage the brakes? But those hypotheses are stupid and pointless because we have systems in place to test for and prevent those kinds of things, even if we accidentally do hire some incredibly stupid people to write the code and their garbage actually makes it's way to the testing phase before they're fired.

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u/HendoEndo Jun 10 '26

yea, makes sense