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Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by dontwearitout on Sunday August 27, 2023 @04:28PM (#37286347)
"You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension." - Tesla

The prospect of low cost swarms of AI enabled drones terrifies me. If you've watched any drone combat footage from Ukraine you know it's just around the corner, and this is another step in that direction.

Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by meheleventyone on Sunday August 27, 2023 @04:52PM (#37286532)
This capability is mostly open source already isn’t it? Granted the AI isn’t fancy but it’d be reasonably trivial to adapt some foamboard or cardboard designs to carry a small payload and turn them into GPS guided bombs. Probably doesn’t happen often more due to it being substantially easier to do what people inclined towards this action want another way.
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by dontwearitout on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:10PM (#37286673)
Yes, a software stack to turn these drones into autonomous area denial or autonomous trench clearing tools could be readily cobbled together using mostly open source components. It would be such a tide changer that it's only a matter of time, and god help the poor souls on the front lines.
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by hackerlight on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:55PM (#37286989)
If we have made an area that can't be traversed by humans on either side, doesn't this benefit the defenders the most?
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by r00fus on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:00PM (#37286601)
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by genericpenguin on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:20PM (#37286745)
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by warning26 on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:03PM (#37286618)
I find this movie fascinating -- I wonder how far we are from building the hypothetical autonomous drone swarms in the movie.
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by Teever on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:07PM (#37286658)
Honestly, it's about as far away as you or I want it to be.

There's nothing stopping a group of motivated people from building a drone assembling factory that fits in a cargo container.

There may come a time where we have to stop outdoor festivals and parades because of people like that Las Vegas shooter from a couple years ago.

The real concern is when people can build a factory that can build the factory...

Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by toyg on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:44PM (#37286907)
You can find cheap disposable drones for £15 on Chinese sites. Weaponizing them should be pretty easy.

The only problem is that the novelty of the approach would be such, that it would bring too much visibility to the attack. Most bad actors don't want to be detected: "he fell from the window" or "his plane crashed" leaves the door open to coincidental causes. Drones are noticeable, particularly in swarms. They would be useful only in "showy" attacks, i.e. open terrorism, a tactic that is largely out of favor after 20+ years of substantial failure.

Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by hengheng on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:09PM (#37286670)
It's not any AI that I'm scared of. It's the assembly line that produces thousands per month, and all it takes to deploy and launch them all at once, is one nondescript semi truck with a 40ft container. The saturation attacks will be real. And just as scary as AI sci-fi, even if the individual vehicles are simply waypoint controlled.
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by jgilias on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:11PM (#37286686)
Does it terrify you more than long rage artillery and cluster bombs? All I see is a more efficient anti-personnel weapon that should be better at discerning between combatants and non-combatants. If it becomes a ‘better’ weapon than say cluster bombs, that’s a great outcome.

I’m somewhat gloomy about all of this. It’s just that war is war, it means killing people. Once it’s on, it’s on. So you need to be able to kill the enemy as efficiently as possible while minimizing non-combatant casualties before and after the conflict.

Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by saiya-jin on Sunday August 27, 2023 @06:12PM (#37287134)
That's just emotional reaction to something very in-your-face, in same vein some folks are terrified of flying planes, despite it being consistently safest method of travel but can hop on a car and drive day and night without much of a worry.

Long range artillery is the killer in Ukraine in terms of numbers, combatants consistently say so on both sides. But it doesn't have that wow effect of drone drop videos.

It has been the same say in WWI, anybody who read for example All Quiet on the Western Front would see it there. Not typical US wars against some poor fuckers with rusty AKs, but this one is very different and much more symmetrical. Something tells me that any symmetrical non-nuclear conflict these days wouldn't look that different to Ukraine.

Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by elsonrodriguez on Sunday August 27, 2023 @06:24PM (#37287205)
Using a cluster bomb against a political rival has a lot more friction than using an autonomous drone.
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by imtringued on Monday August 28, 2023 @02:56AM (#37290721)
If you don't become collateral damage then why would you care for that political rival? There are many ways to kill a single person and most of them won't target you.
Re:Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard by dontwearitout on Monday August 28, 2023 @11:19AM (#37295507)
You make some great points and I agree. Low cost autonomous drones swarms aren't scary because they're more lethal than 155mm shells, they're scary because there's no effective defense (yet).