"The only way for human adversaries to fight autonomous weapons would be with brute, lethal force"
No it's not. You could use EMP. You could use signal jamming. Neither are lethal, both have the potential to be effective against autonomous weapons.
No it's not. You could use EMP. You could use signal jamming. Neither are lethal, both have the potential to be effective against autonomous weapons.
Signal jamming is an obvious weak point - one that disappears as autonomy is increased. Distributed control would reduce this issue, (as in, have a single soldier/operator manage 10-15 units). Eventually, you remove human control entirely, and along with it, this issue.
http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2015/04/22/navy-nava...
Which, to my knowledge, are only currently generated using a nuclear weapon. You might be able to create one using solid state gear with enough time, R&D, and power.
> You could use signal jamming.
Machine intelligence frowns upon your silly attempts at jamming its uplinks. Predator drones and other autonomous, existing military kit already use high frequency satellite communications techniques that are essentially jam proof.
An EMP gun is just a directed energy weapon.[1]
Though you can generate an undirected EMP pulse through various means, there not as useful.[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nucl...
Some use a nuclear source, but not all... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
> "Machine intelligence frowns upon your silly attempts at jamming its uplinks. Predator drones and other autonomous, existing military kit already use high frequency satellite communications techniques that are essentially jam proof."
Your idea of jamming is too narrow. Think about it like this, even if it's mostly automated, these machines still get sent signals to inform them of changes to their mission. That signal can be blocked and/or modified. Even satellite links can be altered, either you hack the satellite system or you intercept the signal at a higher altitude than the receiver is operating in.
Or, if the case of total war, you blow the freaking satellites out of space with missiles. Yes, I know space weapons systems are technically banned, but how long do you think a nation like the US, Russia, India, or China would put up with satellite controlled autonomous drones running roughshod over their sovereign territory before they just blow the satellites out of space?
US military drones may be effectively jam proof, but they are still vulnerable to techniques like GPS spoofing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
American aeronautical engineers dispute this, pointing out that as is the case with the MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper, and the Tomahawk, "GPS is not the primary navigation sensor for the RQ-170... The vehicle gets its flight path orders from an inertial navigation system".[20] Inertial navigation continues to be used on military aircraft despite the advent of GPS because GPS signal jamming and spoofing are relatively simple operations.
The military advantage of putting autonomous AI on drones is so that they no longer need to communicate with home base. The purpose of the AI is to eliminate the weakness of communications being jammed. The requirement to "receive new instructions" is eliminated.
You're going to launch them with the latest intelligence on board manually uploaded, for missions less than 12 hours in duration. It's like firing a missile - you don't need to recall it once you've hit the red button.
So - AI 1 and 2 - drop 2x 500lb bombs on target at 6759 5974 at 03:12 hours. Go.
They complete the mission and head back. Even better, you give them 4x 500lb bombs and they figure out themselves how much to drop to destroy the target.
Communication worries are overblown, you just have to design around them.
FWIW I believe autonomous weapons are inevitable because drones cannot be used against technologically sophisticated enemies that can jam them. The hard requirement for continuous communication is exactly what autonomy is eliminating.
You send ten more drones on different missions to some daycare or something to "punish" the enemy for breaking the Geneva convention.
This is pretty much recorded history here. At some point, you are pulling the trigger. And yeah, you make mistakes.
Pulling the trigger far in advance of the resultant action increases the risk of disaster, disaster that could've been averted based on the richer dataset available closer to the scheduled time.
This scenario is the exact same scenario as a current ballistic missile launch. There are no safeguards for those systems that could be intercepted and interfere with the use of the weapon.