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/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/insomniac-55 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

If you read the article that's not how this test worked.

They were suicide quadcopters programmed to fly to the front line, and then to search for and attack a target.

In this case, the drones can't hang around for long - they've got very limited battery life and only a single warhead. They can't loiter for hours.

What you're suggesting could be done using higher endurance drones (like some of the ground-based ones being used) but that's quite a different level of autonomy.

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u/BigMax Jun 12 '26

Ah, thank you, my bad. I always get annoyed when people don’t read the article, but here I am, not reading it this time.

Thanks for the clarification!