Drones everywhere entered our lives. And from an expensive toy they are already turning into a widely available, necessary and universal subject. However, first of all, their capabilities, as is often the case, were appreciated by the military. Any self-respecting state now possesses strike and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles. The military command has long realized that the future of wars is behind high-precision weapons, while weapons of mass destruction will go down in history. And the weapon is more accurate and faster, the less a person is involved in it.
It was this topic that activists of the movement to ban the autonomization of weapons raised with their roller. It was first demonstrated at the United Nations meeting in Geneva devoted to modern weapons. To date, the movie "Slaughterbots", which can be freely translated as "Drones-killers", has already gained more than two and a half million views. The video, more reminiscent of a short feature film, tells about the development of a new type of weapon - a miniature drone killer. In the story, fully autonomous unmanned vehicles are able to find a given goal themselves, analyzing information from social networks and the Internet, where people themselves have been putting all the data about themselves for years. Having found the target, the drone smashes into it and hits with a directional explosion, using three grams of built-in explosives. Small killers can be thrown from thousands of planes in the required area and break through any defense, if necessary, making holes in windows and walls, independently destroying everyone in their path. However, it is the autonomy of the new weapon that becomes its “Achilles heel” - the terrorists intercept control of the new technology and attack American politicians and students, confirming their lethality with thousands of victims.
How can such amateur fantasy thinking be interesting? The fact that everything shown can be implemented now. At the end of the video, the seriousness of this threat is confirmed by a computer science professor from the University of California at Berkeley, Stuart Russell. He argues that all demonstrated technologies already exist and nothing is fundamentally unrealizable in the video. It remains only to put everything together and reduce it a little. Representatives of the Institute for the Life of the Future, who took an active part in filming the video, agree with him. Members of the institute, such as Ilon Musk, Jaan Tallinn (co-author of Skype), famous physicists Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirr, and in the past Stephen Hawking, have been working on artificial intelligence for the first time, and their opinion is significant in this industry.
In fact, I exist not only technologies, but also already existing models with a similar purpose. Light drones, in the likeness of those models that can be purchased in a regular store, armed with small or even rocket weapons already exist. And since 2011, the US Army has a Switchblade UAV in service. The device weighs two and a half kilograms and is a drone-kamikaze. It can move to the target almost silently at speeds of up to 160 km / h, and thanks to its miniature size it is extremely difficult to knock down on approach. It already has an autonomous targeting system, which is still being set by man. The developers have already announced the testing of a more compact model. But the next logical step will be the delegation of artificial intelligence and the choice of purpose.
The introduction of autonomous weapons is inevitable. A simple soldier — his training and equipment — becomes too expensive to use in combat. And the desire to destroy the enemy in such a fast way, without destroying the infrastructure, will sooner or later conquer the minds of military officials. Even in the hands of the military, the US unmanned vehicles kill an average of one civilian on four opponents, even if many operations were canceled due to fears of civilian deaths. Artificial intelligence will not be so burdened by moral standards. His actions will be as deadly and swift as possible, no matter who gives him commands. And in the world of high technology, getting such weapons into the hands of terrorists or criminals is a matter of time. This is what the creators of this video urge to think about.
