
An Estonian company developing unmanned weaponized ground vehicles - antpls
https://milremrobotics.com/
======
afarrell
I've read the book The Dictators Handbook (watch the CGP Grey video Rules for
Rulers[1] for a good summary) and I can imagine a number of really clear and
compelling Job Stories for this technology:

* As a ruler facing large-scale protests, I want to clear the crowds of people from the streets without deploying soldiers who might choose to actually side with the protestors.

* As a ruler who is afraid of a coup, I want to reduce the personnel-management costs of maintaining my military so that I can reduce the number of officers needed to maintain the same level of force lethality. This will let me purge my officer corps of possibly-disloyal members and lavish rewards on those who remain.

* As a ruler from an ethnic/religious minority, I want to restrict membership in the military to that minority without reducing its lethality so that I can prevent members of the majority from having trained members who could seize power or resist marginalization.

Technological advances like quinine and the Madsen and Maxim Gun allowed fewer
than 1,000 Europeans[2] under Belgian King Leopold to spread the benefits[3]
of civilization to The Congo, an area more than 3 times the size of Texas. I
am excited to see the world that these new advances will usher in.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique#Under_the_Congo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique#Under_the_Congo_Free_State)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#Mutilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#Mutilation)
(although yes, also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#War_with_Arab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#War_with_Arab_slavers))

~~~
rightbyte
Wont the risk for officer rebellion increase with decreased size of the chore?

Even so, it's probably more likely that some murder bot engineers rebell
against the ruler than thousands of soldiers and officers who have a harder
time organizing than a smaller group.

Obviously, this apply for 'evil' rebells vs 'good' governments too.

I would not like to have a single point of failure murder bot army as
garrisons.

------
exabrial
My prediction is the largest market for this will be Arab armies. Unit
cohesion is the biggest problem they face and they usually abandon their
equipment when faced with force. [1]

* [1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk4Yu42g0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk4Yu42g0I)

~~~
perfmode
One thing that video doesn’t address is why ISIS is successful, while others
aren’t.

~~~
epicureanideal
I’m guessing unit cohesion from mutual belief in an extreme fundamentalist
religion, lack of fear from the same, and horrible torturous death for not
doing as commanded.

~~~
freedomben
I would agree, tho I'm not an expert in this area but have studied it in the
past.

It's difficult for non-radicalized people to understand the mindset of a
radicalized religious person (not limited to Muslims). Their belief is truly
powerful enough to overcome the innate human fears and drive for self-
preservation that we all have. It's both admirable, amazing, and terrifying at
the same time.

The threat of extreme tortuous death at the hand your own group is also a
strong motivating factor that keeps people from defecting should their faith
wane or fail them. They typically witness the horror of torture first-hand,
and don't want any part of that themselves.

------
fromthestart
I'm torn between the awesomeness and the morality of working on such a
project.

~~~
imustbeevil
I wonder what kind of military technology is acceptable in today's standards
of morality. This is just a drone. It's not autonomous. It's a remote control
car with weapons or radars mounted on top, controlled by a human looking
through a camera. The military use case would be to reduce the possibility of
human casualties.

Not sure how better to word this. I literally do not understand what kind of
military technology is acceptable. Is the common position that no war should
exist, no guns should exist, no conflict should exist, and anyone else
anywhere in the world that wants to hurt other people should be allowed to
without repercussion? Is the idea that if we don't invest in military
technology countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia will
just make batteries and toys? What is the position I'm supposed to be aligned
with?

~~~
lostlogin
More accurately, it’s to reduce casualties for the military that uses them.
It’s intended to increase casualties for the enemy.

Edit: it’s hard to reply when you keep editing your comments. It’s now quite
different to your original post, though this comment does mostly make sense.

~~~
imustbeevil
But that's what war is. I would imagine it's easier, and less of a risk to all
humans involved on both sides, to create drones with non-lethal capabilities
than to send non-lethal human forces into warzones.

Edit: I added the second paragraph to my original comment within 3 minutes of
posting it, as I noticed there wasn't much hope of getting a response without
fleshing out the question. I now have to choose between adding an additional
reply to contend with the idea that I "keep editing my comments", or to edit
this comment to deal with that additional claim.

~~~
coldcode
I wonder though if the future will turn into the Star Trek episode where
people are "killed" by an AI and then voluntarily submit to suicide. If war is
too non-lethal it doesn't solve the reason for the war in the first place and
eventually will lead to lethality anyway. As Sherman said "War is cruelty.
There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be
over." Perhaps more effort should go into eliminating the reason for war in
the first place, which is of course easier said than done.

~~~
epicureanideal
Hopefully it would be more like... eventually technology becomes so dominant
on the battlefield that without it it’s just suicide. So as soon as one side’s
drones are wiped out, they just surrender.

Although I suppose many countries would continue to resist in a Gandhi-like
moral appeal to the victor’s population to stop the slaughter.

~~~
baybal2
Pfff, that will never happen. Western people no longer understand the nature
of war.

Even if one man with a nuke can effortlessly kill a million, a man with an axe
can kill him as easily if he can manage to sneak close.

------
brd
The US was researching comparable systems (and smaller) back in the mid 2000s.
I knew a few people involved in those programs and seriously considered
joining. Things went very quiet on that front, I've heard no news on those
programs in years. I don't know if that means they continued behind closed
doors or were put on indefinite pause.

This is the best article I could find on the subject which gives some
background as to what derailed the program. [http://strangehorizons.com/non-
fiction/articles/what-killed-...](http://strangehorizons.com/non-
fiction/articles/what-killed-the-robot-soldier/)

------
baq
When AIs wage war against each other in the real, what are humans supposed to
do?

~~~
craigsmansion
Why, watch it on television, of course; take bets in the pub.

Imagine it. Two fully automated, autonomous armies, duking it out, no one
getting hurt. Those with the best engineering and software win!

Winner takes all, but at that point, what is there to take? Resources? Land?
The only thing left is the vanquished enemy's automated military tech and
their engineers and programmers.

And the end-game? One peaceful world government under our no doubt Estonian
overlords.

It will be Battlebots...for keeps!

------
antpls
You can look on YouTube on weaponized version :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTpGhAx-
NbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTpGhAx-NbY)

~~~
rfreytag
Watching this I can see a UN Convention on Autonomous Weapons is inevitable.

~~~
drivingmenuts
All wars should be autonomous vehicles vs autonomous vehicle. A pile of scrap
is better than a pile of bodies.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
and the next step from there is simply to simulate those wars

~~~
bjelkeman-again
And it fails when one side decides it doesn’t like the outcome and escalates
to real war. We see it all the time at a very small scale, where the rules for
resolution of conflict are overridden by not abiding by the rules.
Unfortunately I believe we have to live with the threat of violence, and be
prepared for it, as if we aren’t then those that are tend to win.

~~~
ummonk
Right. War happens when you have a disagreement between two groups of people
who care strongly enough about the issue that they're both willing to die in
significant numbers to try to get their viewpoint to become reality.

------
erikpukinskis
See also: Black Mirror S04E05 “Metalhead” which coincidentally aired exactly
one year ago today.

[https://youtu.be/xpbRBTVVAwc](https://youtu.be/xpbRBTVVAwc) (Featurette)

