I enjoyed the original much more. No, wait. That was a remake. Here's what I was looking for: No, wait. That was a remake, too. Here's what I meant: There are very real concerns related to autonomous warfare, and there are very real concerns related to microUAVs. Just ask ISIS: Or maybe you should ask about ISIS. Look - 3g of explosive in an autonomous package with avionics and standoff dwell is always going to cost more than an AK-47. Always. So yeah - ZOMG someday terrorists are going to have sophisticated weapons beyond our ability to fathom but right f'n now we've got people jumping into trucks and driving them into crowds. Know why that whole "drone" thing went by the wayside? 'cuz the manufacturers geofenced the battlefield. It's the same reason my buddy's company can't get any aerial footage of their shit - their workshop is next to Burbank Airport and anybody's drone big enough to take pictures pops up and goes "oh, shit I'm not allowed to fly here." Which means anybody evolved enough to have a non-geofenced drone also has a refined understanding of the felonies they incur should they try. A problem you don't understand has solutions you don't understand and if your primary source of information is made-up scary videos, you never will.
The comments on HN are interesting; most are pretty alarmist. I agree that we needn't worry so much about this trickling down. It remains to be seen what happens in warfare, however. I expect something grisly before conventions arise. Chemical weapons are comparably easy, biological weapons will become moreso. We can worry about them just as much in a civilian setting. I don't really get the 'social network targeting' aspect. Once you try to envision scenarios where that might be put to use, the practicality of it blows up pretty fast. Oops someone hacked my Twitter; 10,000 radical bots; etc...
I don't find them interesting. I find them archetypal of the navel-staring pseudointellectual posturing that usually accompanies alarmist and breathless hyperbole about the future. The strategy of the video is not to provoke thought, it's to shut it down and most of the HN discussion is "waves hands countermeasures." Look - everyone loves to be scared of chemical and biological weapons but their utilization has been historically low because of their utility. ISIS, which basically ran every play in the supervillain playbook, used chemical weapons. But they also put people in iron cages and drowned them for Youtube. They were also busted with a bagful of explosives, offal and dog poop which had every shitrag in the UK freaking out about biological weapons but let's get real - it's a dumb-ass thug with a bag full of poop and dog balls. And while the world is often given over to flights of fancy the science remains dicey at best. The Rajneeshi cult had a Ph. D. microbiologist with virtually unlimited resources and despite three fucking tries and unlimited access to an entire community, they managed to give 750 people food poisoning. They lost the election, too. Conventions don't matter so much. The UN already thinks that US drone strikes are war crimes. What matters is access and intent and unless your archetypal rogue terrorist organization can buy Parrot AR Killbots Amazon Prime, it's going to fall to state actors and let's get real for a minute: You're in a classroom. You're one of eight dozen Republicans I've decided to target. I need a hundred or so screaming heinous killbots big enough for a 3g "shaped charge" payload. Never mind my success or failure - I'm going to leave a crime scene with an easy thousand serial numbers scattered about like confetti. Is it really going to be that much more effective to drive a van close enough to kill you all than it would be to leave a satchel charge in the corner? You know, the one made out of a pressure cooker, ball bearings and fertilizer explosive? The one with zero serial numbers? The one that costs less than a single killbot? The one I could leave in there right now? "aaaah," you say, "but that would kill everyone, not just Republicans!" which exposes your true concern: that people might be killed on purpose rather than by mistake which you think society would be cool with (because you hate society). But then to make your argument you resort to "but then anyone could be targeted indiscriminately!" which is the exact counterargument to your exact argument and basically exposes you as someone who is afraid of technology for technology's sake. It's so fucking funny that the same people who freak balls about skynet and killer quadcopters are the ones who insist they need to hang onto their guns so the state won't terk their freedomz.
I also enjoyed it as Runaway with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons.
