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Comment by bastawhiz | Hacker News Reader

Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"

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Those kinds of tests have been done with lasers already.

This is a defensive application of lasers, like CIWS is a defensive application of guns.

It’s not going to do anything useful against cars, let alone buildings. It would blind people, and that would be bad, but it’s a very expensive way to hurt people. I think this one is for what it says it’s for.

"It's a very expensive way to hurt people" has historically never been a real deterrent to motivated nation states to bring costs down

Countries dont generally invest in shitty weapons when they already have good weapons. Bombs & missiles already exist and are much better than lasers if your goal is to destroy a stationary target.

The point is, why would they bother when there’s cheaper and easier ways to do it? A high tech laser system is great for shooting stuff down because it replaces missile systems that cost even more. If you want to cripple people, why would you use it instead of a cheap gun or baton?

“It could be used to hurt people” doesn’t mean much. You at least need “it could be used to hurt people, and it’s better at it in at least one way than what’s already available.”

Which will happen because it always happens

Then when that happens that might be morally objectionable. But probably like any other weapon that already exists, a rocket, missile or gun.

While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians.

In Batman Begins, the villian just makes the drinking water toxic. With todays AI and Biotech, one can create a new bacteria or virus and cripple water supply of cities. I am sure a suitable trained AI can get more creative with such low cost attack vectors.

Nah. You can't just engineer some sort of pathogen which will survive water purification treatments, or grow and reproduce in pure water without any nutrients. Real life isn't like the movies.

This just means, the addition of the pathogen has to happen after purification treatments. Viruses can stay dormant and activate only within human body, no need for food.

“Viruses” have a very broad feature set-beyond evoking Batman, it seems like a lot of details need to be hammered out here, even residually chlorinated water can be problematic in maintaining titers. IMO, These days, public health policy (conspiracy?) seems to be a more efficient way to spread pathogens. Not precise targeting tho.

AI Labs Do "Gain-Of-Function" Research

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yVSihOtF4ZA

We already have very cheap and effective ways to kill people.

Not so much when it comes to drone swarms.

Won't work very well. Such things need great stability.

And it's not like there's any need of a fancy weapon to do that. This exists to engage high speed targets. Just because you can use a GBU-28 to kill a gopher doesn't mean anyone ever will.

My understand is it would be useless against a building, but you make a good point

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