“ eventually it became clear that the foremost concern of these plutocrats was maintaining control over a security force which would protect their estates from the rabble in a post-apocalyptic world where money might not mean anything.”

Great basis for a computer game or sci fi book. “Battle your way through waves of robot sentries and guardians to make it to the inner sanctum of the billionaires. What do you find when you get to the end? A skeleton on a throne of gold monitoring his robotic defenses against humanity.

Maybe we should trick all the billionaires into thinking there’s a nuclear war so they scurry into their bunkers never to come out again.

You look through history and see many instances of soldiers refusing their superiors commands to massacre civilians, or even superiors knowing their options are constrained due to their soldiers politics.

This invisible check on power is lost by autonomous drones and robots. Very scary territory to be wading into.

Only until you realize that the dogs are running software and all the best hackers are out here, not in there :)

Is anyone actually surprised by this move? Humanity has not moved past arms races. Any country that agrees to ban this type of weapon will still face them on the battlefield, because there will those who don’t care. Better to have them working on our side.

> Better to have them working on our side.

Your local police department may get the military surplus murderdogs. Maybe just with rubber bullets for "riot control" though. Just guessing of course, but small drones are already in common use by police in several countries.

Wow, that's a LOT of trust to put in the operating system and communications links. These things will be hacked, it's just a question of time.

In that case the obvious solution is just to disable networking to get fully-autonumous murderbots.

Which assumes that the code doesn't have a trojan horse waiting to go off, or just some random bug.

"So hey they’ve started mounting sniper rifles on robodogs, which is great news for anyone who was hoping they’d start mounting sniper rifles on robodogs."

:)

This is already in BF2042; does art imitate life or life imitate art?

The tech industry has been gleefully imitating scifi horror for a while now

> The tech industry has been gleefully imitating scifi horror for a while now

I mean, here on HN we hear that this is not the case at all among employees of big tech, and then we make fun of them.

I don't know why people are surprised by this. Rarely, if ever, has humanity stopped and wondered if the technological path they are about to embark upon may not be the best for the greater good.