Are these drone-based 'lethal autonomous weapons' markedly different to cruise missiles?
Or is the alarm here about the fact that every man and his dog will be able to get their hands on them, when they cost $1000 instead of $1000000?
Or is the alarm here about the fact that every man and his dog will be able to get their hands on them, when they cost $1000 instead of $1000000?
whereas this "slaughterbot" idea is smaller, low-cost, and with far less top-down control.
At least, as I understand it.
On the flip side, the hardware for Slaughterbots is basically here: TinyWhoops cost ~$100, say ~$100 to upgrade the ARM processor to one that can process realtime video, ~$100 for a shaped charge. So the hardware is super cheap, and once developed, the software to tie it all together has nearly no incremental cost. Once it's out there, that's the genie leaving the bottle.
Maybe the small difference is that cruise missiles generally are not anti-personnel weapons; maybe the article is seeking a ban in the same sense that Ottawa treaty banned anti-personnel mines but allows anti-tank mines. But I think this is something that would need to be explicitly addressed instead of just spouting sky is falling rhetoric.