Tennessee Drifter

Please read the news report in the link below and then come back:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2293908-us-military-may-get-a-dog-like-robot-armed-with-a-sniper-rifle/

I like firearms. I think we should have firearms. I am an absolute supporter of the 2nd Amendment, but this is one scary weapon platform. The story says, “It is fully controlled by a remote operator. There is a human controlling the weapon, there is no autonomy or AI.”

So let’s all take a moment and think about this. Today, we have “pilots” who sit in a cubical controlling an unmanned drone that is spying or dropping a variety of ordinance on locations thousands of miles away. And now we will have robot dogs with a 6.5mm (slightly larger than a .223 bullet) sniper rifle, with a camera system that will allow it to operate day or night, also controlled by an operator in a nearby armored vehicle, or a cubical thousands of miles away.

Controlled remotely means that there is a radio signal sent from the operator to the weapon. In an environment where there are limited human operators how hard do you think it will be to program a computer to operate multiple platforms based on an algorithm. Perhaps the algorithm tells the weapons to kill everyone not wearing a particular tracking device, or everyone in a specific geographic area, or everyone displaying particular features.

Am I putting forth a crazy conspiracy theory? What you see in the photo above was Star Wars fiction in 1977, is it so hard to believe that R2D2 could operate that weapon system based on an algorithm.

Because of Star Trek fiction today we have Bluetooth devices, voice activated computers, and computer tablets. Because of Star Wars fiction we are seeing the emergence of automated weapons platforms.

Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should.