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The idea is older than what we call drones, or robots. Original GTA had an RC model car you could drive under your target and detonate remotely - that was in 1997, and they didn't invent this trope. US Navy trained dolphins to deploy ordnance in the 1960s; before that, together with the Air Force they played with strapping incendiaries to bats, packing them into a bomb casing and dropping from the air, with hopes of creating what we'd today call a "Slaughterbots" scenario except EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. And I doubt these were very original ideas, either - I bet you could trace them back to other such R&D across history, all the way to Ancient China, which figured out gunpowder much earlier than Europe, and like with any general enough scientific discovery, had a field day trying to apply it to everything they could think of. They didn't stop at fireworks, they built land mines and unguided missiles too, even multistage rocket and IIRC (read that in some book long ago, can't find independent source now) rockets that could drop payload and fly back home to be recovered. (And yes, apparently someone was crazy enough to try for manned rocket flight, too.) Anyway, I digress. I guess, the larger point I'm making is this: in terms of their relationship with individuals and societies, robots are nothing new. Robots and automation are answers to needs that even first human societies had, and they have not changed. History is full of attempts at fulfilling those needs, many quite successful: domesticating and training animals, forced labor for prisoners, slavery. All these impacted socities, informed laws and fueled imaginations of poets and writers. Which is to say, humanity has been dealing with robots and AIs for a long time now, we have way more accumulated experience with them at social and economic level than people realize - people just called them by a host of different names. "Slaves" and "servants", "genies" and "demons" and "fairies", etc. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_tracked_mine