Permanently Deleted

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    2 years ago

    A quadcopter with a gun barrel, or specifically swarms of hundreds of these, is possibly the scariest weapon on earth. Look up "slaughterbots" if you don't believe me, or if you're ready to be doomerpilled on the prospects of a vanguard party.

    • ShittyWallpaper [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      You know how zoomers are in a linguistic arms race with TikTok auto moderation to figure out which words, phrases, and images flag their AI? Imagine that, but it’s a literal arms race with facial recognition turrets

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
        ·
        2 years ago

        We cannot hope to win this race.

        Practically everyone on Earth is a potential target for someone. Development is easy and cheap. Barriers to entry are low. States will be disincentivized to use them against their own citizens, but non-state actors will have no such reluctance. Anyone who has a leakable or public identity, is a member of any group that another group would want killed, and lives within 50 miles of a major roadway has a slaughterbot or two with their name on it.

        We have two things we can hope for. One is a swift and decisive global takeover of cyberspace by the Chinese, ushering in a socialist transition around the world where we cooperate as interdependent peoples. The other is sweet sweet technological collapse where maybe we manage to live in cob complexes, do a permaculture or two, practice holistic medicine centered around herbalism, and retain enough metallurgy to have bicycles.

    • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      swarms of anything are pretty terrifying, quads don't usually have shrouded fans so just making the things out of metal and crashing them into a person until you get the neck a few times could be some real Hitchcock's The Birds shit

    • pooh [she/her, love/loves]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I’ve always wondered how difficult it would be for someone to build a diy version of that, and how much it might cost. Just browsing online, this off-the-shelf hybrid drone is relatively cheap at $16k and has a 7h flight time + 5kg (~11 lbs) capacity. That seems like enough to carry a lightweight semi-auto rifle with ammo and have a little room to spare. Someone could also maybe use something like a Jetson Nano ($100) for identification/targeting based on uniforms, facial recognition, etc. So I’m guessing it would be a little under $20k (assuming it actually works) which isn’t exactly “cheap” but is frighteningly cheap enough for a lot of people to have their own killer drone, provided they can get it up and running correctly. You could maybe even make a smaller and cheaper drone with an airsoft or paintball gun just to test the concept and harass your friends/family/neighbors, which would be pretty fun.