Israel Deploys Semi-Autonomous Machine Gun Robot to Gaza Border

glowie@infosec.pub to Technology@lemmy.world – 226 points –
Israel Deploys Semi-Autonomous Machine Gun Robot to Gaza Border
thedefensepost.com
65

What the fuck is wrong with you guys. This is absolutely dystopian shit right there.

This is not "nice" or "neat"?!

It's straight up awful. It's war.

One can find interest in an objects technological design while still acknlowledging it's horror when put to practical use. They aren't mutually exclusive options.

A system that can maneuver autonomously is dystopian? Lol, what? This system does NOT fire autonomously

The tank-like robot has the ability to transport itself to a preset destination. It can also spot and avoid obstacles

Source: this article

It is dystopian. It looks like a alpha version of the robocop "bad" robots. It is indeed dystopian. It doesn't fire autonomously just because creators could not implement a "directive 4" (don't shoot who I don't want to be shoot).

So automated driving is dystopian? Brace yourself, I have news about self-driving cars

I have news about them too: they're not actually coming anytime soon, it's all techbro propaganda

I believe that wide adoption of self-driving cars will take a while, but there are already autonomous taxis running around San Francisco

Like the one that drove over that women a few weeks ago, then stopped on top of her and refused to move?

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Yeah, and they keep blocking emergency vehicles in intersections and the whole city wants them gone.

They're prototypes using real human cities as proving grounds without the consent of the population.

It is not. Dystopian is an utopia turning bad. There is nothing wrong with AI, it pays my bills. The killing is what turns an utopia to a dystopia. It's people actions and intentions, not technologies

Dystopian is an utopia turning bad.

It literally is the exact opposite of a utopia, and does not require there to have first ever been a utopia regress into a bad state.

  • AI and autonomous vehicles: utopia
  • AI and autonomous vehicles to kill: dystopian

This is one of the most frustrating thread I've ever partecipated. Why discussions on weapons always turn out like talking to spoilt 4 years old kids.

Maybe it's frustrating because you have your own, random as fuck definitions for words that nobody else shares.

That's not the reason, but thank for trying guessing. Appreciated

Hey, for what it's worth I think most people here understand you completely. A killing robot is dystopian, and anyone arguing otherwise is being dense as hell.

You must not have actually understood him then. He's said this isn't dystopian because it doesn't kill automatically (after also saying it is "alpha dystopian"). It's still dystopian, regardless of whether it can shoot on its own. Every machine of war is.

I appreciate your writing here at Lemmy and I find it easy to misread previous comments.

So, I would like to try to clarify what happened here :
Nuke wrote : "So automated driving is dystopian?" (+...) Then, @Zeth0s@lemmy.world answered : "It is not." (+...)

Because of the rest of their comments I misread it the same way you did and I had to go back and read again (or at least my first reading was the same as what you explain).

it would be nice if you took it on a positive note since on the whole you and @Zeth0s@lemmy.world are saying the same thing.

in the hope of reading more of you, take care 🌸.

I struggle to understand whether you are trolling. I said this thing is dystopian. It looks like the alpha version of the bad robot from robocop movie

"There is nothing wrong with AI, it pays my bills" = "I got mine fuck you"

What do you mean? AI is super helpful, it is doing great things in many fields, including biological research, simplify life of many, supporting and helping people. It is just an umbrella name for many different complex mathematical functions.

Clearly there are bad uses, as any powerful technology. And it is important to highlight them. This is a bad use of AI

Which altruistic thing is it that the AI that pays your bills does? It appears to me that AI is used for acceleration of war, deceit, and theft and conglomeration of ideas and art with no unique thoughts or perspectives. The people who own the technology will use it to enrich themselves at the expense of those who can not afford it. This is what I mean.

Some of the models I built help preventing frauds on customers, i.e. help them keeping their money.

Others support and simplify work of colleagues. There are jobs that are difficult, not pleasant and stressful in my industry, and there is an high demand from people to get help from AI.

I don't know your job, but AI can be very helpful improving quality of life of people in many roles.

BTW AI has been used by artists for years now. I am not talking about generative AI. Photoshop is full of non generative AI tools. Even the spam filters of your email provider are likely nowadays AI.

You should have a deeper look to all enormous variety of AI applications out there

The killing

Once again, this system does not kill autonomously. It merely drives autonomously.

It is just because it is currently technically impossibile to make it fires the "right" people. So the human will fire the wrong people as liability for human shooting civilians doesn't exist. It is anyway dystopian. As said it is an alpha version of the dystopia.

I really don't get why it is so hard to understand Β―\_(ツ)_/Β―

Someones going to get themselves killed when the robots take over with that kind of talk.

I for one welcome our new mechanical overlord's.

1 more...

The tank-like robot has the ability to transport itself to a preset destination. It can also spot and avoid obstacles by utilizing dozens of sensors and an advanced driving system. Moreover, the platform can self-destruct if it falls into enemy hands.

It is not an autonomous weapons system. It is a platform that can maneuver autonomously.

Targeting for the weapon itself is done by a human remotely at least right?

...

...right?

*eta: yeah, it looks like it has a remote driver who can take over the steering and control the gun with a little PS4 controller thingy

How long until there is a version that would let the operator upload a photo of the target and the gun bot would seek and shoot that target automatically, with 99.9% face detection accuracy?

Turkey says they have flying drones who already have done that, so ...

One more step towards the inevitable weapons-free platform that will eventually come.

Braindead militarists never cease to believe that "only we have it, and therefore..."

The truth is that there will be a life after the war, and the war makes it miserable.

Yes, for both sides.

Semi-autonomous doesnt really mean anything and is a deliberately sensationalist headline.

The key technological discussion is when it's not a human pulling the trigger.

Even guns are semi autonomous by this definition

The tank-like robot has the ability to transport itself to a preset destination. It can also spot and avoid obstacles by utilizing dozens of sensors and an advanced driving system. Moreover, the platform can self-destruct if it falls into enemy hands.

I'd have to assume it has some sort of finding/tracking tech as well to stay on target. Trying to compare this to a handgun is just silly.

The thing is, will it select a target and fire without manual intervention? I'm less worried about it moving autonomously than killing. Not that in this case I think it will make any difference if a civilian enters l encounters it.

The CIWS Phalanx has been doing this since the 70s. The main point is that it's implying something new about it's semi-autonomous nature that hasnt previously been used and is thus noteworthy. A handgun automates much of labour involved with applying kinetic force to another human being, reducing it down to a button press that anyone can do.

Trying to suggest this is somehow newsworthy and that they arent just fishing for clickbait headlines is silly.

Australia already has area-denial sentries that autonomously shoot at any motion (with some parameters regarding size and speed).

These, or a similar techology was used for a while along the Korean DMZ until we started talking about building autonomous drones.

One of the shot-down airliner incidents (Flight 007, maybe?) involved a misdesignation of a sensor contact by a US Aegis missileboat system. The plane was pinging with F4 Phantom Radar (which ruled out an ordinary airliner). The Aegis required a human to authorize an attack, but it reported the contact as a bogey (unknown, peresumed to be hostile)...

β€” Apparently, I posted this without finishing it. β€”

So that instance might be considered the first historical case of an autonomous weapon system accidentally killing a civilian (at least partially civilan) target, given the human doing the authorizing had inadequate data to make an informed decision.

(A lot of cruelty of our systems comes from authorizations based on partial data. Law enforcement in the US is renowned for massaging their warrants to make them easy on the signing magistrate, resulting in kids and dogs slain during SWAT raids in poor neighborhoods. I'm ranting.)

"and prevents risks to human life"... no implications there, I'm sure.

Almost 20 years ago (because bad ties) I was presented with a military video for the development of this horror.
Israelis where were very proud in the video to show this thing driving in front of a poor house and firing from outside through the wall to anything (eventually) living inside. They didn't give a fuck whether it was (to be) woman children or else. (of course the house was empty for the research phase, well I hope so).
This is the kind of monstrosity Palestinians are facing now.

I was hoping to participate in this conversation with some long, interesting back and forths with different people about this inevitable, emerging technology. Then I scrolled the comments section...

Let's hope that the "AI" doing the aiming was programmed by Microsoft. That way, it would at least not hit anybody....

Guess I'm done talking shit about Clippy.

It looks like you are trying to violate the Geneva Convention. Would you like help?

  • get help assaulting civilians
  • commit several atrocities from the comfort of your office chair

☐ Do not show this message again

Looks like your trying to oppress a population, would you like Microsoft Bing AI to draft a press releases to establish a narrative justifying automated anti personal weapons deployed against civilians?

Ricochets gotta land somewhere. Just hope it's not a fleshy bit.

I hoped more for an immediate gun jam due to an issue where the gun couldn't reach Microsoft's telemetry servers in time followed by a bluescreen because the right headlight (not the left) was initiated at kernel level for some reason and threw a memory access violation.

Introducing our new Stormtrooperβ„’ AI!

Here we go. I can't wait for the Boston Dynamics one to be outfitted with a .50 and drone support.

That's going to be totally cool and amazing watching it launch its 300 lb body off stuff all Parkour like 360 no scoping dudes while the drone drops grenades.

/s incase you need it. This is totally going to suck.

If the operators can select targets and the drone locks on and fires, that crosses into a high-risk moral gray-zone, since UIs are susceptible to misclicks and the drone may not consider collateral consequences (such as overpenetration.

If the drone can autonomously target and attack on its own algorithms, add to that the inevitable miscalculations meaning it will eventually kill a target that a soldier would not.

In the meantime anarchists amd revolutionaries should examine how to convice it it's been compromised to convince it to self-destruct.

And if it requires a signal from home to auto-destruct, how to block the affirmative signal.

I suspect the GLA is going to develop thick, sticky smoke bombs and signal jammers to make our ground drone blind and isolated. Then it can be neutralized and salvaged for parts.

OK but drones are only allowed to shoot drones. Military companies still win, as this is what's is all about right?

Tell me you can't conscript or recruit more ground soldiers without saying so. 7.62 rounds are personnel ammunition.

What the fuck has happened over there? This is what infinite money, fail-state population looks like.

What the fuck has happened over there?

The inevitable outcome of a situation wherein a country is allowed to blatantly violate international laws and human rights for decades without consequences and a ridiculously overfed MIC with unwavering support from major powers.

Tell me you can’t conscript or recruit more ground soldiers without saying so. 7.62 rounds are personnel ammunition.

Israel running out of military personnel is hardly the only possible explanation. Furthermore, it's rather nonsensical to claim that Israel is running out of military personnel simply because of the type of ammunition that this robot's machine gun is chamebered in -- that is affirming the consequent.