Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed With Rocket Launcher
2y 7mon ago by lemmy.stad.social/u/vidarh in tech@lemmy.stad.social from www.thedrive.com
Because what could possibly go wrong.
Knew BD was full of shit when they said they wouldn’t allow weaponization of their designs.
When the Military-Industrial Complex goes brrrrrrrrrrr, it's hard for companies to say no to the piles of cash that they offer.
It’s weird how casually accepting of this shit people are.
There is a difference between being full of shit and plausible deniability. Their statement is as follows:
"We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables advanced robotics and we will not support others to do so. When possible, we will carefully review our customers’ intended applications to avoid potential weaponization."
Which in layman's terms is:
"We don't SUPPORT groups weaponizing the robots and we won't give them special software to do so buuuuuut if they buy a robot for search and rescue purposes (and put that down for their use-case) only to later strap rifles to it? Well that's on them for using it against our wishes. We can't help what people do with their property"
Are you defending makers of murder bots at me right now buddy?
BD doesn't make murder bots. They make incredibly advanced robot platforms that other people have made into murder bots. You seriously can't tell the difference?
This is sarcasm right?
So you seriously can’t tell the difference. Fun.
Can you explain it then?
The fact that you don't understand this is baffling to me. I don't think the explanation can possibly be simplified
I mean it sounds to me like you guys are saying that since its not BD strapping the guns themselves we should accept it?
I don’t get why people are being assholes about this I’m genuinely trying to understand your viewpoints and nobody wants to explain just call me an idiot.
Should we stop selling computers because people use them to hack and attack people and businesses? Should we abandon AR because they are trying to adapt it for military use?
I’m not saying anything like that.
I’m saying strapping rockets to robots is not what we should be doing.
Of course it isn't. Nobody is arguing that. People do stupid, horrible, and hateful things. However, that will be the case with or without robots.
So, for example, there's this thing that gets used by African warlords a lot called a "technical." There are different versions of it, but the most popular configuration is a Toyota pickup truck with a large machine gun mounted in the bed. You've probably seen it if you follow world news. They are very effective tools for warlords to oppress local populations because they can carry a lot of dudes, lay down fire, and they're really mobile. It's kind of the perfect tool for the job.
Now, Toyota didn't sell the truck with this purpose in mind and almost certainly doesn't condone it. Think about it though. Is Toyota responsible for this? Should they stop selling their pick ups because of it? I say no, but your milageay vary. Especially if you drive a 2005 Toyota Tacoma; 21 city / 27 highway.
The difference is Toyota doesn’t have a contract with African Warlords to buy fleets of Hilux’s.
You see how there is a difference in these two things?
No, I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you explain it another way?
By having a contract in place where they are supplying the platforms that are used to be weaponized they are part of the production line for them. By knowingly doing this they shouldn’t get a pass with a sly wink and playing dumb.
In your analogy Toyota can’t even really stop it. It’s a mass marketed civilian vehicle that is probably stolen and shoddily retrofitted. That’s not the same thing as Toyota handing a cargo ship of trucks over to warlords and saying, “You behave now.” knowing full well they are gonna mount .50s to the crossbar. That’s what is happening with Boston Dynamics still selling these.
What do you know, I still don't get it 🤷♂️
No, sorry, I don’t think I’m smart enough to explain it in a way you’d understand….for…reasons.
I was asking in earnest but seems you just want to be an asshole and insult my intelligence for trying to understand what you mean.
Are you defending makers of murder bots at me right now buddy?
Yeah, totally in earnest. 🙄
Yes exactly. To me they are makers of murder bots, but to you they are not. For me to understand why you feel this way I have to ask right.
For me if a company has a contract in place to provide robots to any entity that are going to be weaponized they should be held responsible.
It doesn’t seem to be the case for some people and that’s what I was wondering about. But now I’m just kind of tired of responding to a bunch of non answers.
If somebody uses a bat to kill someone, do you think Louisville Slugger should be held responsible? Yes or no and why.
No because Louisville doesn’t have a contract in place to provide Sluggers to said hypothetical lunatic.
BD does have a contract in place to provide these to the Military though do they not?
So say they have a contract to provide them to Phillies fans via a stadium deal, and then someone bludgeons a guy to death in the parking lot, what about now?
Depends I suppose those really aren’t comparable and I’d think there would be liability for it somewhere, but probably with the stadium. But that’s not a bat that’s been modified outside of specs, certainly not with prior knowledge to Louisville.
This is more like should Louisville be held responsible for striking up a deal with a nail company that turns their sluggers into maces and then somebody gets bludgeoned. In which case yes they should be held responsible.
OK, but the military is not just a nail company. They make way more stuff than just weapons, a lot of regular things came out of military funding.
For all the seller knows they could be using it for search and rescue. They are not responsible for the end result of what happens to their product when it ends up in the consumers or buyers hands.
Only in cases of negligence does that apply.
The military using these robots as weapons is very different from Boston dynamics using these robots as weapons
It’s really quite simple.
That said, you seem to think the seller of a product has a responsibility to sell only to safe places that won’t go against their own morals and values, and you may have a valid point to that but that’s an entirely different thing than saying “Boston dynamics is itself making robot death machines”.
They make machine that become death machines when modified, would be a more correct statement.
The marines have this video showing exactly what they are doing with them. You aren’t doing search and rescue with a grenade launcher.
I’m not concerned with this ending up in court either. Boston Dynamics is 100% responsible because without them there wouldn’t be murder bots because the military wouldn’t have their bots to build on. Could the military build their own? Of course but they are buying them from BD instead and that’s why we should absolutely hold them responsible.
We're in the bad timeline :(
Always were.
The Berenstein Bears would've never let this happen. :/
My friend works in a open cast mine in Eastern Europe. The miners like to drink but it is strictly forbidden. They use mining explosives and one day decide if would be funny to blow up a stray dog. They strap the explosives to the dog and retreat to cover. About to trigger the explosive and turn round to find the dog standing next to them.
Human soldiers don't always say "no" when they should... but this thing will never say no to anything.
Depending on how cheap you can make this, you could drop hundreds or thousands of these onto a battlefield.
One of the scary things to me about this is that if something that can be made to look like this robot becomes available in a cheap enough model (same applies for drones) you can seek to overwhelm an enemy by swarming them with mostly harmless even cheaper versions (think toy robots and drones) and force the enemy to 3aste resources taking all of them out knowing that some of them might be armed, but not which.
E.g. you can buy $4k or so quadruped robots on Aliexpress while Boston Dynamics' ones reportedly costs in the $200k range. If you get that kind of ratio, for twice cost you can "augment" your armed robot with 50x decoys to drive up your opponents cost to eliminate the threat 50-fold..
In other words, I expect when these end up getting used, sooner or later it will be swarms of them...
Maybe for a robo-druid..
This sounds like something I'd do in rimworld.
Start at 4:00 if you want to see the extremely (!) unimpressive (!!) shot with the launcher.
Personally, I'm rather pleased it's unimpressive and that it wasn't running around hunting people down.
Yet.
Why are people in the comments talking like this is the beginning of an AI uprising? This thing is still remotely controlled by a soldier and not autonomous. It's about as dangerous as any gun, which is to say, pretty dangerous but nothing we haven't seen before. If you want an army of weaponised ribo dogs you'd also need an actual army of people to control them
Largely, I expect, because of the point you make. Needing an actual army of people to control them becomes a limiting factor. Add on to that that requiring remote control makes them vulnerable to jamming, and there's a strong incentive to start making them more and more autonomous both to enable fewer soldiers to control more bots, and to allow them to retain some function without it.
It just largely seems like it will be too significant a temptation.