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Comment by realgeniushere | Hacker News Reader

So what is your point? Why is automated target tracking bad exactly? I’m not saying it’s not, but I don’t see how your argument is different from “all weapons bad”.

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The point is that "you can invert the rewards signal on a Tesla and turn it into a people mower" isn't exactly a dunk on the point above them. We're not worried about Tesla having (someday accurate) people detection because we're not worried about them using it to kill people more efficiently. Indeed, generally people want Tesla to get very good at that!

So automated tracking is bad when attached to a gun because it more easily enables the rest of the concerns laid out in the thread. It's not some hobbyist "paintball the squirells in my yard", but a government-purchased, corporation built project with an explicit, obvious goal in mind. Disregarding that because many other things _could_ be used for bad with a couple lines of code is not the right call, imo.

So don’t you want a gun to hit the target with no collateral damage? Imagine a different use-case, for example a mass shooter in a crowd. Where an AI controlled gum can take out the shooter and not the victims, the way police occasionally do.

Sounds like nyouve forgotten the history of failures in this field relating to identifying who is or is not human based on skin color.

Some of the victims will invariably be dissidents rather than mass shooters when nasty regimes get their hands on them.

So we’re back to the arguments against weapons generally. Yes, you can use a weapon for bad things.

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