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Comment by asimjalis | Hacker News Reader

They should use AI driven mini robots that go around and blow up mines.

They should develop smart plants with a distributed root system, an overabundance of shoots, a preference for seeking mines, and a high threshold for shoot pain.

This would also prepare us with countermeasure systems control for when the AI tries to take over.

What happens when the smart plants with a high tolerance for pain start taking over?

Smart plants that turn red when their roots reach explosives have been around for close to twenty years.

Why have they not succeeded? Near as I can tell the Danish company that launched them experienced huge pushback because they were GMO's and this was the height of anti-GMO hysteria in Europe. The charities that would fund distribution wanted nothing to do with GMO plants - even if they saved lives.

I found one study that said the rats were more cost effective. The seeds had to be flown over the field and a great number of them refused to germinate.

Years later grass started being seeded with a moist paper mulch that contained a small amount of fertilizer. Would it work with these seeds? Far as I can tell the Danish company abandoned development of the product.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plants_that_change_c...

That is incredible. In the literal sense of the word, I thought you were joking until I was halfway through your post.

Do you have any more links? I'd love to learn more.

Any reason we wouldn't expect these to become invasive?

The rats are already mini, and have real intelligence unlike AI does. They also reproduce cheap.

Mines are cheap and numerous, and anything that deals woth them had to be cheap

so, you are indirectly saying intelligent creature are cheaper than machine which uses AI ....

I am directly saying it, I can buy a rat for $10

rats take ages to train and that process is not cheap.

drones + ground penetrating radar + computer vision + machine learning is a viable option.

Yes, let’s work on a solution that’s super expensive while and not known to actually work while we ignore cheaper solutions that may actually be affordable.

What would the advantage of that be? Sounds over-engineered & prohibitively expensive - this works today & scales.

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