[damnitbuilds]

If you drop a dumb bomb on an area, it kills everyone there.

If you release an autonomous drone in an area, it will probably kill everyone there, but might use its AI to decide not to kill some people there.

Why is the latter worse than the former ?

[kevincox]

"Kill everyone in the area" is probably the least harmful for the reason described.

It is much more dangerous when they start to be selective. Then people start trusting the selection capabilities and use them in cases where they wouldn't use a "kill everyone" weapon.

[sillywalk]

> Why is the latter worse than the former ?

I'm not sure about worse, but think one of the differences would be the size of the 'kill zone' and the cost/availability. 10 quadcopters "cover[ed] between 3 and 5 kilometres ". That would take a lot of bombs and a multiple aircraft sorties with to kill everything there. e.g. During the Vietnam war, a group of 6 B-52 bombers modified for carpet bombings could bomb an area around 1Km x 3Km. Only the US and Russia have heavy bombers that can do that. It could be done with smaller fighter aircraft, but that's more sorties.

That's vs. 10 quadcopter drones.

[e12e]

They can both be bad.

One way in which automated drones might be considered bad, is (if) they cannot accept surrender - but are used in scenarios where human operators could.

"No quarter" is a war crime.

[nickff]

This is a much more difficult distinction to make than you're letting on. Cruise missiles offer no quarter, but manually operated drones might (though there is often no way to capture the opponents). The question is what is the difference between the two weapons systems...

[e12e]

Drones might hunt down enemies running away from the target site, while a missile would only destroy the target - and those not abandoning their post?

[whattheheckheck]

What a fun system we have set up and continue to be trapped in

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Why does it have to be? Did bombs make guns obsolete?

If a military can bomb you or drone you, it will bomb you and drone you.

[adampunk]

Willingness to play.

It is similar to the problem with the neutron bomb. On the surface the idea of the neutron bomb (a bomb which kills humans via hard radiation but leaves infra intact) is not “worse” than a regular nuclear weapon. The dead die the same way and the living envy them. What CHANGES is the use calculus. I might not want to bomb an industrial valley if doing so destroys the thing I am trying to capture. However, if I have a bomb which kills the people living there and spares the factory, I might pull the trigger.

Similarly, it is cheap (relatively) to indiscriminately launch weapons at a distant place. It is extraordinarily expensive to send human troops in. They need food, water, and generally have families that expect some of them to come home. If putting a rifle on an autonomous vehicle works, then a ground invasion becomes cheaper.

[IshKebab]

One way is that selective killing is more useful and therefore desirable. For example consider the classic slaughterbot video. It's plausible that someone capable might want to kill all democratic senators. It's much less likely that someone capable will want to kill all of them with a massive bomb.

[iberator]

People can be held accountable for war crimes. That's why they are less willing to commit them and obey orders blindly.

Ai is like 8yr old with gun: unpredictable

[damnitbuilds]

Seriously, what sort of fuckwit downvoted this ?

[wartywhoa23]

I did, for one, for your failure to understand the danger and implications of getting rid of all human accountability of the military for killing people.