Comment by palmotea
3 days ago
But AI weapons aren't horrific in some way common to "all lethal weapons." They have that and more.
AI weapons are specially horrific in the way they have potential put massive and specific lethal power under the total control of a small number of people, in a way (like all AI) that basically cuts most of humanity out of the future (or at the very least puts them under a boot where no escape is imaginable).
In some ways, they're even worse than nuclear weapons. A nuclear attack is an event, and if you survive there's some chance of escape. Station 100,000 fully automated drones around a city with orders to kill anything that moves, and the entire population will be dead in a couple months (anyone who tries to escape = dead, everyone else sees that and stays inside out of fear until they starve).
Manpower and attention limitations have been and important (and sometimes only) limit on the worst of humanity, and AI is poised to remove those limitations.
I think that's exaggerated.
But even if it's true, I don't see why letting China and Russia etc be the only ones having these weapons is good?
> I think that's exaggerated.
Honestly, I think the tech is probably getting pretty close to what I described. You don't need AGI or anything like it. Just autonomous surveillance drones watching for movement, and attack drones that can autonomously navigate to the area and hit the target (the latter is just stringing together a lot of drone tech I've seen implemented, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWIYOOKItM, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drone...).
> But even if it's true, I don't see why letting China and Russia etc be the only ones having these weapons is good?
That doesn't mean the tech isn't scary (a bad thing) or that I want SV people like Schmidt developing it. There's something weirdly misanthropic and unhinged about many in SV.