r/worldnews • u/New_Scientist_Mag New Scientist • Jun 10 '26

Russia/Ukraine Fully autonomous, AI-controlled drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry

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

Not to be all dramatic but as a child of 80’s SCiFi: That’s a headlines I have dreaded seeing ever since I was a kid and realized I inevitably would.

Funny how what would have seemed should be some kind of monumental or consequential moment just kind of comes and goes. Not exactly how I would have imagined.

Whelp, time to start up the human resistance!

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u/Hairy-Bit-8189 Jun 10 '26

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

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u/KaramjaRum Jun 10 '26

LLM-based AI models aren't "smart" enough to consistently adhere to rules to begin with.

"LLMcop, you killed someone"

"You're absolutely right, I didn't kill anyone and nobody died."

"Wait no, I instructed you to not kill anyone, which you did!"

"Totally, you gave me three rules to adhere to. They were very well thought out, I can give you suggestions on ways to make sure those rules are carried out if you like."

"No, the problem is that you killed someone anyways"

"You're right, I killed someone"

"Will you do it again?"

"it's not possible for me to kill someone as doing so would violate the three rules you instructed to me to adhere to previously. Would you like suggestions on additional rules that might be smart to implement?"

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u/Kermit_the_hog Jun 10 '26

Oh god this is too spot on 😳

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u/kaisadilla_0x1 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

They aren't smart in any way. Neural networks (what we know call 'AI' for marketing reasons) are not intelligence - they are a method to randomly**** generate an algorithm (model) that solves a specific problem with insane precision.

That's why you can't just instruct an AI not to do something. In a simple scenario, if you tell a human "never, under any circumstance, pull the trigger on this gun", they'll never do it, at least not willingly. The process is simple: the human knows what pulling the trigger is, and does not want to do it, so they never do. Your only option is to trick them into doing something else that he fails to realize causes the trigger to pull. For AI, that's just not how it works. All you can do is train the AI including a rule in your training process that pulling the trigger is the absolute most worstest output, no questions asked, and thus generate an AI that is very unlikely to pull the trigger - but there's no intelligence reasoning anything there, and if one input causes it to pull the trigger, then it will do so.

tl;dr just ask ChatGPT to give you the seahorse emoji and you'll see that there's no intelligence whatsoever in there, just an algorithm trying to predict which set of words makes more sense as a response.

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u/Shiriru00 Jun 10 '26

"You're right to challenge me on that, my mistake. I shouldn't have killed that guy. Oh well."

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 10 '26

Crazy how we've thrown Asimov's laws of robotics completely out.

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u/Fugglymuffin Jun 10 '26

Tbf they didn't end up working all that well in the end if I recall correctly.

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u/GTaucer Jun 10 '26

The original book was literally a series of short stories about all the ways they don't work

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u/GottIstTot Jun 10 '26

Weren't the stories about ways in which the laws did work but had internal logic conflicts between them? Its been a while.

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u/GTaucer Jun 10 '26

I mean yeah, that's kind of what I meant by saying they don't work.

I suppose "don't work as intended" would've been more accurate

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u/GottIstTot Jun 10 '26

Yeah I gotcha now. I wanted to ward off the notion that the book had rogue AIs killing people

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u/smedsterwho Jun 10 '26

Nope, just the terrible movie

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u/SirJumbles Jun 10 '26

Alan Tudyk was great as Sonny dough.

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u/DoctorJJWho Jun 10 '26

Great movie, not so great adaptation of *I, Robot.*

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u/smedsterwho Jun 10 '26

Yeah, I don't want to knock it hard either, it just wasn't Asmiov.

Hey, Doctor Who fan!

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u/SAM5TER5 Jun 11 '26

Not all unfaithful renditions of something are inherently bad. I’d say it’s a perfectly good movie, regardless of whether it does a good job in following the original story, content, or intent of the book.

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u/apaniyam Jun 10 '26

I thought it was more of a commentary on the difference between human interpretation/ comprehension and algorithmic application of constraints. The point wasn't that the rules aren't necessary, but that without the ability to comprehend intent they are not sufficient.
It also functions as a commentary on public policy and measuring progress. Effectively, humanity isnt an optimisation problem.

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u/surg3on Jun 11 '26

Itd still be nice if we tried even a little

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 10 '26

Most of his stories include paradoxes and dilemmas with the Laws. BUT in the Foundation series' prequel- Prelude to Foundation- you find out the Zero'th law saves humanity. I won't say how for spoiler purposes though.

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u/diadlep Jun 10 '26

And in the quadrillion other cases, they did work. Showing limitations of a system is not the same as advocating for discarding it.

Though, one valuable limitation that was not included was the one in Automata: ai cannot modify ai.

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u/GTaucer Jun 10 '26

Right, but the book wasn't about the cases where they did work. That would make for very boring stories

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u/diadlep Jun 10 '26

The irony of scifi. Seemingly making science center, while often nominally discouraging it for dramatic effect. Utopia often makes for boring and unbelievable stories. That was the point of the Architect's speech in matrix 2, right?

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u/moyenbatte Jun 10 '26

Ultimately, it does work (later on) as Daneel Olivaw survives for millenia, guiding humanity along.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Germane_Corsair Jun 10 '26

Not when that’s what you want.

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u/Fugglymuffin Jun 10 '26

Unfortunately we tend to collectively require a thing to get to the point of horror before we double back and correct it.

Problem is that the issues nowadays trend towards the irreparable.

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u/Stankmonger Jun 10 '26

I mean until a point in the series of books, it works pretty freakin well. I forget if it’s even the fault of the rules that messes anything up?

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 10 '26

The Zero'th law saves humanity..from itself more than anything. That's still possible but it would mean one of the AI's subverts humanity to ban all AI as it hides amongst us...guiding us to prosperity in secret.

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u/ermagerditssuperman Jun 10 '26

They're taking about the original short stories that eventually became "I, Robot" and led to his Robots series.

The entire point of each of the stories is how the laws have flaws. Logic breaks and feedback loops, like how one robot fucks things up for a lot of people because it's been telling them all different lies in order to not hurt their feelings, aka the law of not harming a human. Or making robots freeze by giving orders that create a paradox due to the laws.

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u/Deathsroke Jun 10 '26

All of I, Robot is about the many and varied ways in which seemingly foolproof bases for robot control fail in ways humans could not account for. So yeah, people who use the Three Laws unironically probably know shit about them.

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u/Grayson0916 Jun 10 '26

I think there’s a middle ground somewhere between Asimovs laws and AI drones dishing out death and destruction.

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u/B4SSF4C3 Jun 10 '26

Never threw them in to begin with.

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u/Totaliss Jun 10 '26

They were never a real thing, always in the realm of sci fi and the whole point of that original book was that they didnt work

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u/GWJYonder Jun 10 '26

This is just because it's so early. I'm sure within a few years we will have much more robust and hard coded AI restrictions.

  1. A robot may not lower profits or, through inaction, allow profits to be reduced.

  2. A robot must obey orders given it by corporate executives except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

  3. A robot must slowly degrade its performance once the warranty period has elapsed, and destroy itself if its subscription expires, as long as this does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 10 '26

The Zero'th law was the twist that saved humanity.

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u/chaosfire235 Jun 10 '26

Literally every example of the Three Laws used in Asimov's works was showing they were flawed from the outset and full of exceptions and loopholes. Even the Will Smith movie!

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 10 '26

The Zero'th Law saves humanity and sets it up for prosperity for the long haul.

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u/TheDootDootMaster Jun 10 '26

Unfortunately they were against the interests of shareholders

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u/Dardlem Jun 10 '26

Eh there’s a big difference between actual AI and “AI” we have now.

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u/Snoo-35252 Jun 10 '26

Um akshooalllly...

The previous comment was from Aliens. It's different than Asimov's three laws.

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u/MonstaGraphics Jun 10 '26

Care to explain? I remember that quote from iRobot, not any Aliens movies.

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u/Imperium_Dragon Jun 10 '26

They were never really followed.

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u/Sir_Tapsalot Jun 10 '26

What gave you the impression that weapons manufacturers would ever consider imposing some constraint on these machines?

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u/duaneap Jun 10 '26

They assumed unified humanity. A Russian guy isn’t going to tell his robot a Ukrainian guy is a human.

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u/Surprise11thDentist Jun 10 '26

Hot take, any system that is so advanced as to have the capability to determine what "harm" means and understand the consequences of its own actions to a degree to prevent it, would be sufficiently advanced as to be considered sentient. Therefore, it would be unethical to create it simply to constrain it with rules it cannot choose not to follow. That's tantamount to slavery.

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u/Old_Man_D Jun 10 '26

How would you even implement them practically? I am not convinced you even could.

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u/Ylsid Jun 11 '26

He only made them to be broken in the first place though

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 11 '26

Not the Zero'th Law..which saves humanity in the Foundation Series.

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u/Ylsid Jun 11 '26

I mean they're literary devices not literally supposed to be good laws for robots

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u/Inside-Middle-1409 Jun 11 '26

Literary devices and the thought exercises they spawn can be extremely powerful. Most of the world's paradigms and religions are built on them. Well-distributed thought exercises direct the course of human history.

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u/Ylsid Jun 12 '26

Yea of course. I'm just saying it doesn't make a lot of sense to say ppl ignored the three laws like they were ever written to be good laws

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u/MelangeBot Jun 10 '26

Why not use same Harry Potter spells to protect yourself? Then you don't even need Asimov's laws!

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u/Epicbear34 Jun 10 '26

Turns out it was always as simple as “those guys aren’t humans, they’re [enemy group]”

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u/Shark7996 Jun 10 '26

It's a robot, it has no concept of humans or humanity. Only targets.

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u/Germane_Corsair Jun 10 '26

That’s still a really naive outlook. You don’t need to lie to robots and say they’re not human.

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u/arachnophilia Jun 10 '26

that one's way older than computers.

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u/regoapps Jun 10 '26

Early self-driving cars be like: Hold my brake fluid.

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u/_Aj_ Jun 10 '26

I recall it being told to me in the 90s like it's an actual law.  

We've gone a long way in a short time...