Should there be a global ban on autonomous weaponry?
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 20358 votes
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
such a ban would probably be unenforceable (Score:2)
if such devices are undetectable -- because their functionality is not detectable when in use -- how could a ban be enforced?
Re: such a ban would probably be unenforceable (Score:1)
Re: such a ban would probably be unenforceable (Score:2)
I am seriously afraid that the EU might one day be invaded because they will have so regulated their military to death, that Russia will be able to walk in and hardly fire a shot.
History is full of
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EU might one day be invaded
unrealistic. EU's and Russia's money are intertwined.
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Until the world is a place full of liberal democracies,
Hardly. You can build one in your garage tomorrow, it won't be an Aerial HK of Terminator fame, but it'll do the job. I personally wouldn't give it face recognition software and license to kill with me out of the loop, but that's just my personal choice, fearing for my own life, it wouldn't be hard to do. The hard part would be making it reliable, but maybe individuals with an agenda don't care?
The problem with these proposed bans are:
1) It's so easy
Re: such a ban would probably be unenforceable (Score:2)
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I think that reading Asimov would give a bit of an interesting and intriguing discussions on that point when it comes to how fuzzy this can be.
We have had heat-seeking missiles for decades now, and that's a kind of autonomous weapon.
In smarter weapons then you could have "don't kill humans", but if someone redefines what human is then you could get a bad result. Hence the Asimov reference. And such a weapon would have been loved by many throughout history.
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I don't get your point, but maybe that was a typo and the last part was supposed to be reversed.
Having said that, I think the main objection is that programmable devices can be reprogrammed. Even if the program is in ROM, the ROMs can be replaced. Therefore any "sufficiently smart" weapons system could go off half-cocked in an "autonomous" manner. The problem is that if it's supposed to go after the enemy, you have real problems with the false negatives. Not that you'd call it friendly fire, but it would st
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Re: such a ban would probably be unenforceable (Score:1)
Limited use cases (Score:2)
When is a weapon autonomous? (Score:2)
Is a heatseeker autonomous? Once launched it picks its own target which is, hopefully, the one intended by whoever launched it.
There's a quagmire lying in the definitions here.
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No. The heat-seeking missile is not roaming around looking for targets. It is shot - by a human - against an intended target.
The heat-seeking part is for accuracy.
CIWS (Score:2)
The US Navy's Phalanx anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems are completely autonomous, as a missile can come in too fast for a human to react to. Of course most of the time they are turned off, but when entering hostile territory they are activated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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A human operator turns any robot on and off. If that's the definition then no weapon is autonomous because there was always a human who chose to set it loose.
Just put up signs: "autonomous weapons free zone" (Score:2)
Are people really so naive to think that words on a piece of paper will stop bad people from doing or creating bad things?
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Are people really so naive to think that words on a piece of paper will stop bad people from doing or creating bad things?
Yes, people really are than naive. It's the reason we end up with laws that prohibit you from doing things that are against the law already.
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Exactly. Anybody remember those nuclear disarmament treaties of the Cold War? What good did they do?
It could work, but it might help (Score:1)
While there's no chance of a ban actually stopping the bad guys (Iran, Russia, USA, UK, EU, err, well everyone actually, except possibly the late Mother Theresa) from making any particular sort of weapon (and anyway some arsehole can always reverse a ban), at least it cramps their production and deployment.
On the fence (Score:1)
There's 2 things at play here:
A) Deciding who / what / where to pick as target. It seems we still prefer to keep humans in the loop here.
B) Do the actual job of killing / bombing / destruction etc. It seems we're already comfortable using (smart?) machines for this purpose. Ranging from machine guns to Predator, Tomahawk rockets and more. But ultimately still with a human selecting the target & pressing the "go" button. Or at least I'd hope / like to think so...
Autonomy imho means leavi
It's futile (Score:1)
Who is the target? (Score:1)
Is it going to kill some teenager sneaking back into the house at night?
Is it going to just decide to open fire on a crowd because a sensor sent a bad signal?
Is it going to try and use facial recognition to target people/enemy soldiers/'terrorists'?
Or is it going to be programmed to take out political leaders the programmers don't like without leaving a trace of who sent the robot or told it who to target?
hilariously niave (Score:2)
would you rather a robot fight a robot, or be drafted into the military to kill other humans?
I mean, come on people. Pull your heads out of your asses.
Prohibition doesn't work. (Score:3)
Not for drugs.
Not for weapons.
Just... not.
For good or ill people and countries will find a way to get what they want, no matter what. You can and should try and ban the worst of it, but it will never be very successful.
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Autonomous precision beats human slop. (Score:2)
Fear of the exotic by those ignorant of war is understandable , but combat has been getting "cleaner" since the advent of modern precision weaponry.
Consider artillery and aerial bombs. In the bad old days one had to saturate target areas to have some chance of success. Look at WWII bomb damage photos then compare to modern PGM strike footage. We no longer have to destroy a city to take out a factory.
PGMs kill far fewer civilians than area bombardment and autonomous PGMs won't tire or make emotional decision
See... (Score:1)
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... Babylon 5 s01e04 "Infection". tl;dr/SPOILER: characters come across autonomous defense mechanism of ancient extinct civilization, programmed by populist zealots, that had detected its own entire civilization as "unpure" and wiped it out.
Wouldn't that be tl;dw (too long; didn't watch)? Or, I guess around here, it could be tl;dr (too long; didn't rewatch)...
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... Babylon 5 s01e04 "Infection". tl;dr/SPOILER: characters come across autonomous defense mechanism of ancient extinct civilization, programmed by populist zealots, that had detected its own entire civilization as "unpure" and wiped it out.
"No one is pure. No one!"
lol (Score:2)
A human is an autonomous weapon. The most dangerous one in human history.
Missing option. (Score:2)
The natural next step... (Score:1)
Yes, but it's unenforceable (Score:2)
Isn't the whole point of warfare... (Score:2)
... that you don't give a fuck who banned you from what?
Also, my vote is for: ONLY autonoumous weaponry! But ONLY against other autonomous weaponry.
And if I could enforce that, I'd also say: NO humans allowed on the battle field!