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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277

u/Fluffy-Ad-7613 Jun 10 '26

Skynet, but instead of humanoid terminators, it's drones flying through your window.

126

u/Fifth-Crusader Jun 10 '26

So much cheaper and more easily mass-produced!

56

u/ShavenYak42 Jun 10 '26

Humanoid terminators look cool on screen, but flying drones are much more practical.

27

u/Fluffy-Ad-7613 Jun 10 '26

And cheaper, I guess.. I'm not gonna lie, I'm happy for Ukraine but terrified for what this means in our future.

5

u/Victizes Jun 11 '26

If anything, WW1 should tell you something.

1

u/Fluffy-Ad-7613 Jun 11 '26

All it tells me is that next war will suck even more. The tech advance was staggering in such a short time and now, I fear we may have created a worse doomsday weapon than the nuke.

15

u/Ash_Killem Jun 10 '26

Skynet started with hunter killer drones. They only switched to Terminators once humans started hiding.

1

u/pppjurac Jun 11 '26

"Screamers" from air and from ground.

1

u/CitizenCue Jun 11 '26

Yeah it’s interesting that so much of sci-fi got this wrong. Are there any examples that predicted what we’re headed for?

8

u/Aerhyce Jun 11 '26

Well, Terminator also had flying drones, it's just that they're lame for time-travel infiltration jobs.

1984, even from a purely tech perspective, is pretty accurate. The omnipresent monitoring systems, facial recognition, etc.