[deepsquirrelnet]

The DoDs recent beef with Anthropic over their right to restrict how Claude can be used is revealing.

> Though Anthropic has maintained that it does not and will not allow its AI systems to be directly used in lethal autonomous weapons or for domestic surveillance

Autonomous AI weapons is one of the things the DoD appears to be pursuing. So bring back the Skynet people, because that’s where we apparently are.

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/anthropic-ai-defense-w...

[chasd00]

hasn't Ukraine already proved out autonomous weapons on the battlefield? There was a NYT podcast a couple years ago where the interviewed higher up in the Ukraine military and they said it's already in place with fpv drones, loitering, target identification, attack, the whole 9 yards.

You don't need an LLM to do autonomous weapons, a modern Tomahawk cruise missile is pretty autonomous. The only change to a modern tomahawk would be adding parameters of what the target looks like and tasking the missile with identifying a target. The missile pretty much does everything else already ( flying, routing, etc ).

[slibhb]

Yes. They published a great article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drone...

As I remember it the basic idea is that the new generation of drones is piloted close enough to targets and then the AI takes over for "the last mile". This gets around jamming, which otherwise would make it hard for dones to connect with their targets.

[testdelacc1]

A drone told to target a tank needs to identify the shape it’s looking at within milliseconds. That’s not happening with an LLM, certainly.

[mikkupikku]

A loiter drone on the other hand can probably afford to take a minute to identify a target before dropping on it.

[zer00eyz]

> Autonomous AI weapons

In theory, you can do this today, in your garage.

Buy a quad as a kit. (cheap)

Figure out how to arm it (the trivial part).

Grab yolo, tuned for people detection. Grab any of the off the shelf facial recognition libraries. You can mostly run this on phone hardware, and if you're stripping out the radios then possibly for days.

The shim you have to write: software to fly the drone into the person... and thats probably around somewhere out there as well.

The tech to build "Screamers" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) ) already exists, is open source and can be very low power (see: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O_lz0b792ew ) --

[chasd00]

> software to fly the drone into the person... and thats probably around somewhere out there as well.

ardupilot + waypoint nav would do it for fixed locations. The camera identifies a target, gets the gps cooridnates and sets a waypoint. I would be shocked if there wasn't extensions available (maybe not officially) for flying to a "moving location". I'm in the high power rocketry hobby and the knowledge to add control surfaces and processing to autonomously fly a rocket to a location is plenty available. No one does it because it's a bad look for a hobby that already raises eyebrows.

[tim333]

The Ukrainian drones that took out Russia's long range bombers used ArduPilot and AI. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb)

[phba]

> a hobby that already raises eyebrows

Sounds very interesting, but may I ask how this actually works as a hobby? Is it purely theoretical like analyzing and modeling, or do you build real rockets?

[chasd00]

Build and fly. It’s interesting because it attracts a lot of engineers. So you have groups who are experts in propulsion that make their own solid (and now liquid bi-prop) motors. You also have groups that focus on electronics and make flight controllers, gps trackers etc. then you have software people who make build/fly simulators and things like OpenRocket. There’s regional and national events that are sort of like festivals. Some have FAA waivers to fly to around 50k ft. There’s one at Blackrock Nevada where you can fly to space if you want. A handful of amateurs have made it to the karman line too.

[capncleaver]

Not whom you are replying to, nor a rocket hobbyist myself, but yes, they do build and launch rockets for fun, eg VC Steve Jurvetson out at black rock: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/54815036982/

[phba]

Pretty impressive!

[wordpad]

Didn't screamers evolve sophisticated intelligence? Is that what happens if we use claw and let it write its own skills and update it's own objectives?

[gs17]

Scarier, in the original story, the robots were called "claws".

[whywhywhywhy]

Judging by the ecohazard of fiber optics Ukraine has become I think it’s safe to say it can’t be this easy

[bigyabai]

It turned out that the Pentagon just ignored Anthropic's demands anyways: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used...

I really doubt that Anthropic is in any kind of position to make those decisions regardless of how they feel.

[deepsquirrelnet]

I don’t disagree, but they should be. Last I knew, the government doesn’t control the means of production… and the current US regime loves to boast about it. Confusing right?

[georgemcbay]

> Autonomous AI weapons is one of the things the DoD appears to be pursuing. So bring back the Skynet people, because that’s where we apparently are.

This situation legitimately worries me, but it isn't even really the SkyNet scenario that I am worried about.

To self-quote a reply to another thread I made recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145#47083641):

When AI dooms humanity it probably won't be because of the sort of malignant misalignment people worry about, but rather just some silly logic blunder combined with the system being directly in control of something it shouldn't have been given control over.

I think we have less to worry about from a future SkyNet-like AGI system than we do just a modern or near future LLM with all of its limitations making a very bad oopsie with significant real-world consequences because it was allowed to control a system capable of real-world damage.

I would have probably worried about this situation less in times past when I believed there were adults making these decisions and the "Secretary of War" of the US wasn't someone known primarily as an ego-driven TV host with a drinking problem.

[breppp]

Statistically more probable this kind of blunder will happen in a small disaster before a large disaster and then regulated

e.g. 50 people die due to water poisoning issue rather than 10 billion die in a claude code powered nuclear apocalypse

[nightski]

If you ever doubted it you were fooling yourself. It is inevitable.

[samiv]

It's ok we'll just send a robot back in time to help destroy the chip that starts it.

[wolttam]

Judging by what's going on around me, it failed :(

[bcrosby95]

We're just stuck in the non-diverged timeline that's fucked.

[tartoran]

If we all sit back and lament that it’s inevitable surely it could happen.

[nightski]

It doesn't matter, it only takes one to make it happen.

[nradov]

The DoD was pursuing autonomous AI weapons decades ago, and succeeded as of 1979 with the Mk 60 Captor Mine.

https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m...

The worries over Skynet and other sci-fi apocalypse scenarios are so silly.

[deepsquirrelnet]

Self awareness is silly, but the capacity for a powerful minority to oppress a sizeable population without recruiting human soldiers might not be that far off.

[nradov]

The more automation a weapons system has, the more human technicians are needed to keep it working.