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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

The problem with the Slaughterbots narrative is it's not actionable.

We can choose not to build nuclear weapons: they're weapons with lots of weapons specific research associated.

But drones aren't. The technology is general use: it's a natural consequence of a couple hundred incremental improvements, and the only difference between "weapon" and harmless is a software parameter and a payload.

"Find and kill this person" is indistinguishable to a search and rescue AI, just with "on found and centre camera" triggering a bullet or a spike or a bomb and not text notification.

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Guns are also "easy" to manufacture, but are successfully restricted.

The clear outcome of this is the current ptb enslaving the world without needing so much as a police force.

> Guns are also "easy" to manufacture, but are successfully restricted

Hahaha. This is a privileged take. 3d printing guns has been a thing for years now, and the FGC-9 (Fuck Gun Control 9mm) is a carbine that uses zero restricted firearms parts.

Gun control is in serious danger of becoming completely obsolete.

Edit: I'd like to add that the FGC-9 is also durable, none of that single-shot disposable .22 pistol stuff.

The Halle shooter built his own weapons out of metal but he didn't have access to real ammunition. He couldn't forcibly open the gate to the synagogue with his guns. Gun control works just fine.

The recently departed Jstark actually commented on the ammunition. Smokeless powder isn't hard to make, he simply didn't know how. The information has since been released.

No they're not.

On an international scale guns aren't restricted at all in any practical sense.

Nuclear weapons can have international conventions and treaties because they're difficult and obvious to build. Mass producing cheap drones and downloading an AI from the internet to run on a repurposed Android phone is not only normal, it's already happening now.

You also don't need a proper gun. A gun is a big advantage if you can't safely get close enough to someone without them getting a chance to react.

But if you can fly a drone or a number of drones up to someone too fast for them to react, there are any number of other ways to kill them with easily obtainable materials.

Totally agree. Each drone already has 4 sharp blades. Easy to replace them to be slightly bigger, sharper and from e.g. titanium instead of plastic and covering with poison/venom. Enough to slit someone throat/wrist and wait until bleed to death or detect someone eye and stab with nail.

Wow, sharp blades now that sounds dangerous. If your drone is basically a flying lawnmower I can see how that will kill or heavily insure hundreds of people with a single drone.

But that isn't very surprising though. An Apache helicopter can kill hundreds of people as well...

What's surprising to me is that someone suggests that we do away with the toy drone swarm idea and to increase the capabilities of the drone without requiring an additional payload.

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