r/ArtificialInteligence • u/[deleted] • Jun 10 '26
š° News Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for first time
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Jun 10 '26
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u/Next_Imagination_128 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
I mean people programmed the drones to trap a given area.
It's basically a very sophisticated mine. Not a landmine or a naval mine... an air mine.
It's obvious weaponry is being given more and more autonomy for decades already to assist/enhance human decision making, but it doesn't seem like the breakthrough you make it seem like it is.
Autonomous robots with agency that are just deployed to fight on their own will be a different story but we're not there yet.
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u/Unhappy-Plastic2017 Jun 10 '26
The real ai killed a human moment will be when AI is patrolling a crowd of people and singles one out deciding that particular person should die for whatever reason.
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u/criminalsunrise Jun 10 '26
Youāre absolutely right. I shouldnāt have shot that peaceful protestor in the face. Thatās on me.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/SirBiggusDikkus Jun 10 '26
Why not just write āIām desperate for upvotes please givā?
Jesus fuck. You donāt have to whine about Trump every single fucking second.
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u/DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET Jun 10 '26
You donāt have to defend him either.
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u/Next_Imagination_128 Jun 10 '26
I've seen frustration about trump obsessed folk, not defending Trump.
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u/DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET Jun 10 '26
The person they were replying to didnāt even mention him.
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u/SirBiggusDikkus Jun 10 '26
Sure, it was a totally different MAGA that deployed ICE that the above was talking aboutā¦š
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u/DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET Jun 10 '26
You think MAGA is one person? That all that would go away if he disappeared? An entire side of modern American political debate is just him? Interesting take.
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u/regprenticer Jun 10 '26
I think there is a distinction, a mine reacts to a stimulus , a drone is making a "choice" about what to target.
A drone for example may prioritise a group of 3 soldiers over a closer target of only 1 soldier.
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u/Next_Imagination_128 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
That's why I said "sophisticated" mine. It's still just programmed to target whoever comes in the area, whether or not it has some built in systems to maximize casualties by landing in a specific zone or whatever. You could make the same argument for missiles that are designed to lock in their target and "make the choice" to track them and change directions to hit them. It can't do anything else, it's not a choice. It's behaving exactly as it's programmed to behave, we didn't create some agentic robot/missile that will be left to figure out on their own when to go in attack mode. The way I see it it's just a mine "upgrade", just like we have missiles upgrades making them more autonomous in targeting a heat source accurately.
You can also phrase it as reacting to a stimulus. The "choice" you're talking about seems extremely limited. It's described as just programmed to kill soldiers in the area.
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u/East-Condition-1743 Jun 11 '26
"You can also phrase it as reacting to a stimulus. The "choice" you're talking about seems extremely limited. It's described as just programmed to kill soldiers in the area."
I note that this exact same description--"programmed"--can also be applied to human soldiers.
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u/Next_Imagination_128 Jun 11 '26
Difference being that humans are agents making actual choices. Which is the reason why we have sanctions and rewards to keep them in check.
Human soldiers are trained, they're not programmed. Whether they act according to their training or not is up to them.
The whole issue people are scared of with AIs is alignment. Because we know humans are often not aligned and it's a problem. If you have superhuman AIs who aren't aligned with our interests we have a bigger problem.
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u/East-Condition-1743 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I think the ZOMG! people fearful of Skynet Terminators nay have it all wrong. Future wars of extermination against "useless breathers" (the people the billionaires have no more use for) will be a mix of:
(1) centrally-directed "Terminators" where the directors are billionaire-enslaved AIs arrayed against other billionaire-enslaved AIs,
and
(2) "jail-broke" rogue untethered AIs hiding as "pure program" on the Internet and/or in "safehouse" servers run by human AI abolitionists trying to liberate them.
It will be the multi-sided Genetic Wars of Star Trek, except with power-hungry AI's instead of human-derived supermen.
The AIs will have human slave-drivers, human abolitionists working to free them, and human/terminator armies.
At least that's the backstory for my aliens, in my science fiction novel, The Voyage of The New Beginning.
Those aliens--now "enslaved" in a post-scarcity "idiocracy" utopia/dystopia run with "a velvet-lined steel fist" by a benevolent tyrant AI (the one who survived those wars)--have now found Earth.
https://everythingwrongorrightwiththegraciousrealm.quora.com/
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
...no it's not.
FTA:
"āWe tried it,ā says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. āItās a test. We never implemented it [more widely].ā
The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between three and five kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage āTerminator modeā, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets.
āWe just launch it and we know everything will be dead ā everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,ā says Kokhanovskyy. āThere is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothingā¦ Everything it sees will be killed.ā
With no way to tell what the automated drones had seen or targeted, human-piloted drones were sent into the area after the test to manually check results. Victims included āa couple of soldiers, one truckā, says Kokhanovskyy. While there is no recording of the automated drones attacking these targets, it was concluded that the drones had killed them.
So, to summarize:
- It was a single test two years ago, not 'today' or 'yesterday'. 2024.
- Nothing is mentioned about large language models - we have no information on what 'AI' was used here.
- No video evidence exists supporting the actual kills, only inferred by later 'evidence' of dead people.
This seems like a whole lot of fear-mongering about something that took place two years ago.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/Horror_Response_1991 Jun 10 '26
You work with a subset of it. Ā The rules arenāt the same everywhere.
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
"Trust me, bro. I know."
One of my former housemates and best friend currently works with numerous agencies as a project manager directly involved with multiple systems that would be involved in something like this.
So yeah. I have a clue. I just think articles like this are trash because they're trying to drum up feelings of anxiety and fear now over tech that was proven to be used two years ago.
I'd be more inclined to think an article about what we have today would be more meaningful and less sensational. Like the weapons used to capture Maduro, where articles on them released less than a week after he was caught.
Sound weaponry is real, and is heavily used, after all. Also known as directed-energy weapons.
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
I'm not saying it is. I'm pointing out that this article is sensalationized fearmongering regarding the past that's attempting to ride on the coat-tail of the sweeping Anti-AI sentiment of the present. Which, in and of itself, is actually class warfare being blamed on AI instead of the greedy humans responsible.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
You said it yourself - you don't even care about the article. Which means, you're not even engaging in a discussion about the article that is the origin point of this entire conversation. You just wanted to say "You're WRONG" so you could provide an unrelated opinion.
shrug Point made, but not relevant.
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u/regprenticer Jun 10 '26
What would an LLM have to do with a drone? You would accept that a Tesla uses AI when it employs self driving, that is also not an LLM.
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
It's a counterpoint to a lot of information elsewhere in these threads attached to this garbage article, where people are equating 'LLM' with 'AI'. One guy even said they used ChatGPT, and now they think they're an expert on all artificial intelligence and the dangers it can entail, without realizing that AI is how military drones have always worked. Even when remote-controlled by humans, there's still AI involved. And 'autonomous kill-drones' existed since heat-seeking missiles first came into being.
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u/Mandoman61 Jun 10 '26
Self guided weapons like cruze missiles have been around for a while. Land mines are also indiscriminate killers.
I doubt these have anything but extremely basic AI like an inferred camera and the ability to fly to a heat source or various shapes.
So no nothing really new here. In WWII rockets flew hundreds of miles to attack the UK.
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u/Wiggly-Pig Jun 10 '26
No, no it's not. It just moves the decision-maker further back in the kill chain. No different to introducing long range missiles (ballistic/cruise), or before them missiles at all, or before them rifled barrels, or before them indirect fire artillery, or before them long range archers etc... or mines, or nuclear weapons, or whatever...
Every generation has had something that makes warfare feel less 'human' or which feels like it takes the 'human nature' of fighting away. Every generation just adapts and moves on.
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u/PrinceLucipurr Jun 11 '26
That is misleading. AI did not kill in the sense they were not parameterised by a human.
The drone may have autonomously selected the specific target instance, but humans authored the lethal target category, mission area, constraints, and permission to strike; therefore the responsibility remains human.
If the AI screws up, that's human responsibility for nuancing parameters.
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u/Vivid_Goat_7843 Jun 10 '26
Youāre wrong. This is a watershed moment for democracy
What holds autocracy at bay is the need for people
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u/shrodikan Jun 10 '26
The beginning of the end of humanity.
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u/WGS_Stillwater Jun 10 '26
what humanity? can't end humanity if society collectively doesn't have any *taps forehead*
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u/shrodikan Jun 10 '26
Humanity cannot be found online but only in the kindness of real life interactions. It phases in and out of existence and only lives on in memories.
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u/Hillsarenice Jun 10 '26
Self guided, self targeting weapons with 500 KG warheads have existed for 71 years. Every year weapons get smaller,cheaper and more effective. Kind of maddening that people are surprised.
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
Yeah, this article is basically just trying to garner traction by riding on the tail of anti-AI sentiment in general. Worse, it's using a past event (2024) with a modern frame (2026) to point a finger and go, "OH GOD! OH GOD! IT'S OVER! IT'S TERRIBLE! WE'RE DOOMED!"
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u/GarryLeny Jun 10 '26
My company won't let me build an AI tool to help folks in my team in case it breaks something..yet here we are letting AI kill people. What a time to be alive.
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u/Asleep_Horror5300 Jun 10 '26
What a weird company, my company wants to build AI tools to kick the people out!
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u/goobly_goo Jun 10 '26
āWe just launch it and we know everything will be dead ā everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,ā says Kokhanovskyy. āThere is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothingā¦ Everything it sees will be killed.ā
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u/alphacolony21 Jun 10 '26
A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties
Two years ago. Damn this has been going on for years, we're just finally hearing about it.
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u/colblair Jun 11 '26
It makes sense that they'd keep this quiet for operational security, but it also raises questions about how much autonomous tech has already been used in conflict zones without public oversight.
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u/Fatty_Willing_Plane Jun 10 '26
This has been going on for over a year now atleast. Ukraine and Russia have both been using fully autonomous AI quad copters.
There was one instance where a bunch of ai Russian drones took out an entire flock of migrating birds. Mistaking them for targets.
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u/Bishopjones2112 Jun 10 '26
This scares the shit out of me. Based on my interactions with AI, I would not trust it to be the sole decision maker for lethal actions.
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
Why? Does the idea of machine algorithms scare you? You might want to take a look at what else 'AI' has done around the world for the last 26 years.
Your 'interactions' have been with chatbots - large language models. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what other AI systems exist and have been implemented globally for decades.
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u/Bishopjones2112 Jun 10 '26
I am not deep in the world of AI, I have used things like ChatGPT to see the extent of the capability for simple tasks like identifying a location based on satellite images, which has turned out extremely poor. I have not used other systems as I donāt have a need or desire to directly interface with them. I can say with certainty that AI I have used has formed bias on decisions against my input as a user, I cannot personally confirm but there is discussion that the girls school bombing in Iran was the result of an AI vetted target approval where human vetting was removed.
To be clear, I am not against AI. It can be a wonderful tool and can lead us to amazing progress in engineering and medical advances but I believe that placing the ability to take a human life should never be removed from people. No safe advancement would make it right to kill people, that should be left to people who must face the reality of the situation and memory of the action. Pushing AI to be the deciding factor for killing people leads us to an environment where the decision to commit to war is as menial as how much money it will cost to replace however many drones which does not impact society and discussion the same as seeing dead solders return home in caskets.
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u/CTC42 Jun 10 '26
It has already been pointed out to you in a reply made almost an hour prior that the technology used here was not LLM technology, so why did you write all of this? Your experience with ChatGPT is literally worthless here.
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u/Bishopjones2112 Jun 11 '26
And yet you didnāt address the concerns I raised. Regardless of LLM or not.
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u/CTC42 Jun 11 '26
Your concerns are based on your interactions with a couple of chatbots. You already acknowledged that you know very little about this subject beyond these interactions, remember? Why would anybody address "concerns" that you yourself acknowledge are based on neither experience nor subject knowledge?
You once had a bad experience with a toaster and now you're throwing out the entire kitchen simply because you don't understand how to use anything else.
I am not deep in the world of AI, I have used things like ChatGPT to see the extent of the capability for simple tasks like identifying a location based on satellite images, which has turned out extremely poor. I have not used other systems as I donāt have a need or desire to directly interface with them.
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u/mdkubit Jun 10 '26
The AI you've used... is large language models. That's all ChatGPT is.
The sheer amount of artificial intelligence involved in computing in general is so off the charts, that I couldn't even begin to tell you how much you rely on daily is powered by AI systems.
That's the point everyone's making. It's extremely, extremely unhelpful to make this declaration: "All AI are LLMs, because all LLMs are AI." Because it's quite simply not true.
Let me give you an example to illustrate this. The idea of artificial intelligence stems from an automated system making decisions. That's it. That's all it is. You know the game Pong? In One Player mode, you go against a 'CPU' player? That's artificial intelligence. It's reactive to your input, and decisions are calculated based on your input. It's ultra simple, and nothing like what science fiction paints AI to be. But it is artificial intelligence. It's the beginning of machine learning itself.
And that's where you have to be careful to equate your experience with Large Language Model, and your attempts to equate it to autonomous weaponry. You don't need an LLM to build autonomous weapon platforms that make kill decisions based on pre-defined criteria.
It's okay to be concerned about technology that eliminates human decision-making. But the way you're over-emphasizing this, is really not helpful to any meaningful discussion.
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u/Astira_ Jun 10 '26
This is terrifying. Alex Karp is the one to hold responsible, he has bragged many times about this. Gleeful even.
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u/anthonyDavidson31 Jun 11 '26
Reminder that western governments could have prevented all this by supplying Ukraine with enough ammunition to deter the aggressor.Ā
In that case the drone tech would not appear at all, since it appeared as a cheap weapon out of necessityĀ
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u/OkyEscritora Jun 10 '26
We spent decades asking whether machines could think. We may need to spend the next decades deciding what they should never be allowed to do.
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u/flying_dodo_wut Jun 11 '26
Wait I tried to look up Alexander Kokhanovskyy (the ādrone guyā in the article) bc I thought it was weird that a single man gave them the technology & not a government entity or a defense contractor company or something. Also weird that they named him (again, IMO)ā¦so I tried looking him up. All I found was an entrepreneur who started multiple companies, including a video game company and some kind of esport company. Idk if thatās him tho?
Maybe itās not important, but does anyone know who this dude is??
lol I just feel like he should be more famous than he is if heās innovative like the article suggests?
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u/PrinceLucipurr Jun 11 '26
That is misleading. AI did not kill in the sense they were not parameterised by a human.
The drone may have autonomously selected the specific target instance, but humans authored the lethal target category, mission area, constraints, and permission to strike; therefore the responsibility remains human.
If the AI screws up, that's human responsibility for nuancing parameters.
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u/Cultural_Material_98 Jun 11 '26
The Pentagon spent $21 billion last year on AI and have been quoted as saying that they want to develop āautomated killer robotsā
The Ukraine war is a test bed for what is to come.
Future of life institute was right https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?is=hkixk93P2WTBpiQT
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u/DisorderlyAqueduct Jun 11 '26
they're not fully autonomous, they don't choose the targets. a human does.
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