Slaughterbots on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2018–2026.
other · evergreen
Slaughterbots is a fictional short film, backed by Stuart Russell, depicting swarms of cheap autonomous drones that use facial recognition to assassinate targets. It was made to argue for banning autonomous weapons.
HN invokes it as the standard reference whenever drone swarms, autonomous weapons or military AI come up in the news.
“see Stuart Russell's compelling short film”
20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Can drones be stopped? They have the potential to wage campaigns of automated political violence. I see companies trying to protect against them, like Dedrone [1] -- how effective are these? I imagine most here have seen it, but if not, you must see the slaughterbots video. [2] [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video
in “Venezuela President Maduro 'survives drone attack'” · View on HN
This brings to mind a great video which I've posted here a few times: ▶ this video What happens when technology progresses so much that anyone can make a swarm of killer drones? Will politicians no longer be able to go out in public? What about a distant future, when enriching uranium can be done in your garage for cheap...
in “A swarm of drones flying through heavy forest–while staying in formation” · View on HN
The substantive part of this conversation comes about 35 minutes in, when Allen describes the DoD's five AI ethics principles: that any deployed AI systems must be "Responsible, Equitable, Traceable, Reliable, and Governable." [1]. I think "Responsible" raises some hard questions. Today, any weapons use by a robot might require a responsible human operator to first (remotely) pull the trigger. But what if an adversary allows their robots to fire without waiting for human permission? The first side to do so would gain a critical advantage, and we cannot have an autonomy gap. Some have raised conerns that in the extreme case, this could lead to a world of machines anonymously killing without attribution. If you haven't, see Stuart Russell's compelling short film "Slaughterbots" [2]. [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video
in “How the U.S. military thinks about AI [audio]” · View on HN
The tech required for search and rescue is the same tech required for search and destroy. We seem to be running headfirst into the autonomous killer bot future without giving so much as a second look at the implications. Slaughterbots [0] is a pretty good look at what can be achieved by refining and integrating technologies which all exist today. [0] ▶ this video
in “Fleets of drones could aid searches for lost hikers” · View on HN
Related: Reminds me of the slaughterbot video [0] and the Hated in the Nation Dark Mirror Episode [1][2] [0] ▶ this video [1] [link] [2] [link]
in “Google Workers Seek 'Red Lines' on Military A.I., Echoing Anthropic” · View on HN
I don't think any of tensions, classical conflicts, asymmetric conflicts, the amount of people with nothing left to "loose", or all of these together, are at particularly unusual levels compared to the previous 6000 years, though they're higher than they were 20 years ago. But, for most of that time, warfare was geographically localized; you could avoid directly experiencing warfare by not being a soldier and living inside a country that wasn't being actively invaded, or on the national border between two countries that weren't at war with each other or being actively invaded. Sometimes that was easier said than done, but most people managed it most of the time. In the Drone Age, though, you can remotely pilot a quadcopter 4300 km away to blow up airplanes on the airstrip: [link] — or to blow up your political opposition, if you can guess where they are or will be. The US has been doing this for 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq: [link] (use Readability mode to bypass "this is not a paywall") but a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper costs on the order of US$100 million, so there are less than 400 of them [link] while Ukraine's most popular drones cost on the order of US$300, can be 3-D printed in a basement, already cause 70% of casualties on the battlefield, and are produced in volumes approaching 10 million per year [link] . Many experts believe drones have made tanks obsolete on the battlefield [link] . Even without autonomous weapons, we're rapidly moving toward the future of bor
in “Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system” · View on HN
It's a shame that Slaughterbots ( ▶ this video ) didn't have the intended impact and shortly after the video was released it seems that autonomous drones were used to hunt down humans Libya.
in “Low-Cost Drone Add-Ons from China Let Anyone Turn Toys into Weapons of War” · View on HN
It's eery to see reality slowly resemble science fiction of the past. obligatory Slaughterbots reference: ▶ this video Also scary how much of this war you can watch with a POV. UkraineWarVideoReport is full of videos where you can see the drones and humans in action [link]
in “Homemade, Cheap and Lethal, Attack Drones Are Vital to Ukraine” · View on HN
I remember the first time I learned about drone swarms was this YouTube video called Slaughterbots: ▶ this video Of course at this point, my country had been using drones to kill people since I was a small child, which I think is ironic. In the Slaughterbots scenario, each specific drone has sensors and AI good enough it can pilot itself and doesn’t need an external connection that can be detected or disrupted and is good enough to target individual people with facial recognition. I believe (this is not an area of expertise for me) that the drones depicted in that video are still far more advanced than what currently exists currently (but I think it could probably get there within the next 10-20 years), whereas the video linked shows a more realistic drone swarm attack where it’s targeting infrastructure and the blast radius is larger than being able to target an individual's head, but still smaller than traditional UAVs. It’s an upsetting watch, but the part of me that enjoys speculative science fiction (I love evaluating how realistic the apocalypse is in zombie movies) always found the attempted countermeasures employed to be silly and unrealistic. Covering windows and leaving only tiny circles so no drone can get through etc… But at the same time, the video struck a chord because as soon as I saw it, I knew some form of this was coming and likely within the next decade. But mitigations and countermeasures are being developed in tandem. I think that's the major thing the Slaugh
in “US Air Force Shoots Down Drone Swarm with THOR Microwave Weapon” · View on HN
> Killer robots will be a great equalizer in the ability to create a nightmare hellscape I imagine most people here have already seen the Slaughterbots video: ▶ this video A more conventional type of attack would be using large numbers cheap cruise missiles. If you can make them for $20k each then $1bn would buy you 50,000 of them, which is probably a good deal more than the number of anti-aircraft missiles your adversary has, and certainly a lot more than their number of fighter aircraft. Therefore firing off a lot in one go would overload their defences and many would get through. If aimed at infrastructure target, they could cripple a country's economy, and how soon after that do people start starving?
in “U.N. talks adjourn without deal to regulate 'killer robots'” · View on HN
It'd be better to link to the source[0], that's a content-stealing channel you linked to. [0] ▶ this video
in “U.N. talks adjourn without deal to regulate 'killer robots'” · View on HN
This video was posted to HN a couple years ago. It's the first thing I think of whenever I watch one of these videos of new drone tech. ▶ this video [link]
in “Autonomous drone navigates independently through the forest at 40 km/h” · View on HN
There's so-called "nuclear breakout time" for how quickly a non-nuclear nation could create nuclear weapons.[1] Time for a similar "slaughterbot breakout time."[2] However unlike with nuclear weapons, this is something a small team or even individual could soon achieve and then hold as a deterrent or use for sociopolitical aims.[3] It's easy to imagine an arms race between drones and the tiny point defense turrets (likely lasers, maybe kinetics or even EMPs) trying to disable them, both systems operating far faster than humans can react. In a strange way, wars fought like this may involve less loss of life, with soldiers surrendering to a cloud of slaughterbots that destroyed the automated defenses in seconds. This forthcoming ability to intimidate and harm precisely, anonymously, robotically, and at scale makes autocracy more likely and more durable. [1]: [link] [2]: "Slaughterbots TED talk." ▶ this video [3]: "Hated in the Nation" Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 6 (Netflix)
in “Autonomous drone navigates independently through the forest at 40 km/h” · View on HN
Slaughterbots come to anyone's mind? For those that haven't seen it, it's on youtube. Wikipedia: [link] Video: ▶ this video
in “Israel's autonomous 'robo-snipers' and suicide drones raise ethical dilemma” · View on HN
That link out to the China drone swarm video is pretty crazy. I hope we do live in boring times and don't have to deal with drone warfare wherever we live. [link] Drones in the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Some of the same Chinese suicide drones being used. [link] Slaughterbots: ▶ this video
in “How once-elusive laser weapons suddenly became a reality” · View on HN
Swarming drones and AI is the scariest tech and we are going to see the consequences. Because it will be so cheap and ubiquitous. This isn’t even the atomic bomb — where the work was just too sweet to stop. This is basic technology with small incremental improvements tons of people can do. Drones are the first robots that are among us (overhead). Self-driving cars are at least very expensive to produce. But drones can be mass-produced and deployed anonymously. Drones with live munitions is terrifying. Imagine an anonymous swarm descending on Union Square in SF. Even under normal operation, drones can fall and hit someone by accident. Let alone a swarm. This is one technology I should not want to be in anyone’s hands, but if it is, it should be in the hands of the State and not everyone. Just like bombs. PS: With cheap cameras being ubiquitous and people can be identified by their gait, heartbeat etc. consumer level tech can also include an AI that can cross correlate everywhere you’ve been. Businesses would use it to fine you when you park your car for too long and don’t go into the store. But governments and police departments can concoct tons of believable stories with parallel construction and put anyone they want away. In fact AI can also be adopted in other places in the policing and judicial process (as with Palantir) leading to a Kafkaesque experience for sentencing. And with deepfakes it’s worse than that. Anyone could create a believable video of a rape-caught-on-vid
in “Turkey Now Has Swarming Suicide Drones It Could Export” · View on HN
> It was being pitched as the ideal way to assassinate people in a crowd - identify them by heartbeat signature, fly a drone in to drop a small explosive package on their heads. Reminds me of this little presentation [0] [0] ▶ this video
in “Pentagon has a laser that can identify people at a distance by their heartbeat” · View on HN
I never realized license plates were able to be utilized by a well funded private data aggregation operation. Great observation. How far do we have to go with allowances for information and actions that are taunts for death and destruction? It seems to me that the only fair way to shape society and well..shared reality..is to allow everyone to do everything and anything and allow others who feel strongly to enact responses..ie punishments. This will eventually maybe be the case ala Star Wars, independent agents roaming reality, with no law other than consequence by others. It seems this is untenable too because it evolves into unfair reality, biased on wealth and capital of weaponry and defense. Not only physically but on a knowledge and information and technological basis. Isnt the real underlying archtype of license plates and well..any authoritarian laws by the government a sort of protectionism for those of us without the money for defense and offense of our own free persons? [1] ▶ this video I am libertarian..but freedom in reality is a function of resources. So I cannot square this circle... laws are a hard issue.
in “Traceability on the Internet” · View on HN
We only call it AI - creating an autonomous ML system that is designed to kill anyone can lead to us all being killed by math and plastic - it's a singularly bad idea, so much so there is no scoring mechanism that justifies it - too much chance we end up with this -- ▶ this video
in “AI at Google: our principles” · View on HN
Every time I see one of these drone tech demonstrations, I can't help but wonder how they will be adapted for warfare. This one... I'm seeing flying solar powered landmines (skymines?) that can flutter around an active combat zone aimlessly for hours until it detects a personnel target and bops them near the temple with a small round. I wonder if there are any actual benefits over just putting a solar panel on a regular quadcopter and having them charge a battery, maybe staying stationary in field or ditch near the road, relocating once in a while and waiting for a target. Slaughterbots, assemble! ▶ this video
in “Researchers build a solar-powered hovering drone that weighs only 9 mg” · View on HN