Autonomous drones following running people through the woods, without GPS.
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@knowprose @pbloem Exactly. We don’t HAVE to create every technology that we can. We can choose which directions to innovate in. Indeed we do! And this… yikes.
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@b_cavello @pbloem yeah. I write about it myself.
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Social impact statement: This technology allows population-level massacre at a cost of a hundred dollars per person. Produced at scale it could cause more suffering and death per dollar than nuclear weapons.
However, there are also positive uses: it could be used to help runners improve their form.
@pbloem I swear to fuck, the Terminator movies need to be *part of the curriculum* for technology education, as a negative example...
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Autonomous drones following running people through the woods, without GPS. Developed, with military funds, at a public university.
This is not dual use anymore, this is single use. There is only one use here.
Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming a negative Nancy with all my ethics talk, and then I see colleagues proudly post this kind of thing without a single acknowledgment of the implications.
@pbloem@mathstodon.xyz “armed” “target locked”
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Autonomous drones following running people through the woods, without GPS. Developed, with military funds, at a public university.
This is not dual use anymore, this is single use. There is only one use here.
Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming a negative Nancy with all my ethics talk, and then I see colleagues proudly post this kind of thing without a single acknowledgment of the implications.
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Autonomous drones following running people through the woods, without GPS. Developed, with military funds, at a public university.
This is not dual use anymore, this is single use. There is only one use here.
Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming a negative Nancy with all my ethics talk, and then I see colleagues proudly post this kind of thing without a single acknowledgment of the implications.
@pbloem this is why tech studies should not neglect teaching the humanities!
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Autonomous drones following running people through the woods, without GPS. Developed, with military funds, at a public university.
This is not dual use anymore, this is single use. There is only one use here.
Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming a negative Nancy with all my ethics talk, and then I see colleagues proudly post this kind of thing without a single acknowledgment of the implications.
@pbloem I'm not understanding what the "single use" is. I have a DJI Neo 2 drone that can do this and its primary purpose is to shoot video. I don't find that something to be worried about so I suspect I'm missing something in your post
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@pbloem I'm not understanding what the "single use" is. I have a DJI Neo 2 drone that can do this and its primary purpose is to shoot video. I don't find that something to be worried about so I suspect I'm missing something in your post
@mlanger Killing people who are running away from the drone.
If you want to film people you don't need to worry so much about autonomy, or chasing a target that is actively running away, or about doing it without GPS. All the design parameters here scream war.
To be fair: I was slightly hyperbolic. You _could_ use this to film somebody doing a trail run. But in this case, that's not the obvious application.
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@pbloem this is why tech studies should not neglect teaching the humanities!
@qevlarr I agree with the general idea. But just adding some arbitrary ethics course to the curriculum is not enough at this point. I think we need to discuss concrete social impact inside of the technical courses, right next to every technology.
The normal humanities curriculum can be a bit vague and non-commital for the average techie. In my lectures I've tried to always give very direct, concrete examples of exactly how technological developments have killed or hurt people (I'm not always the most fun lecturer).
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Social impact statement: This technology allows population-level massacre at a cost of a hundred dollars per person. Produced at scale it could cause more suffering and death per dollar than nuclear weapons.
However, there are also positive uses: it could be used to help runners improve their form.
@pbloem Importantly: it allows this massacre to happen with the killers out of reach of the target...
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@qevlarr I agree with the general idea. But just adding some arbitrary ethics course to the curriculum is not enough at this point. I think we need to discuss concrete social impact inside of the technical courses, right next to every technology.
The normal humanities curriculum can be a bit vague and non-commital for the average techie. In my lectures I've tried to always give very direct, concrete examples of exactly how technological developments have killed or hurt people (I'm not always the most fun lecturer).
@pbloem @qevlarr Not always the most fun? How the hell would describing the social impacts by looking at the mechanics of what a technology does in a society using real world examples not be fun?!
... ah, right, the devistating fealing that anything you try to do to improve the world makes it worse. Temporarily forgot about that one.
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Social impact statement: This technology allows population-level massacre at a cost of a hundred dollars per person. Produced at scale it could cause more suffering and death per dollar than nuclear weapons.
However, there are also positive uses: it could be used to help runners improve their form.
@pbloem I've seen similar devices marketed to runners and cyclists, and for such purposes it does seem pretty cool. Of course, I can easily see how it could be used with less pleasant intentions too.
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Autonomous drones following running people through the woods, without GPS. Developed, with military funds, at a public university.
This is not dual use anymore, this is single use. There is only one use here.
Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming a negative Nancy with all my ethics talk, and then I see colleagues proudly post this kind of thing without a single acknowledgment of the implications.
@pbloem That whole slab of text they posted is just AI-generated, I'm sure.
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@mlanger Killing people who are running away from the drone.
If you want to film people you don't need to worry so much about autonomy, or chasing a target that is actively running away, or about doing it without GPS. All the design parameters here scream war.
To be fair: I was slightly hyperbolic. You _could_ use this to film somebody doing a trail run. But in this case, that's not the obvious application.
@pbloem @mlanger The Bioneer (a fitness influencer with a YouTube channel) has a lot of footage of himself running on trails, such as here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9-thkwnmkA
It's clear that there's something that gets the drone to follow and keep him in frame, and he seems to do an awful lot of the filming himself.
Maybe the drone shots are controlled by another person, but it sure looks like it follows him some other way.
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Social impact statement: This technology allows population-level massacre at a cost of a hundred dollars per person. Produced at scale it could cause more suffering and death per dollar than nuclear weapons.
However, there are also positive uses: it could be used to help runners improve their form.
@pbloem and while armed properly it will convince runners to go faster and farther ...
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@lana @knowprose @pbloem my thought exactly. I have worked in labs like this. They know what they are doing, though they probably state it as "this will save the lives of American soldiers" and conveniently elide the part where it's murdering other people to do so and also assuming the American military and/or whoever else gets their hands on it will use it for "good".
But yeah they are not naive, they know they are developing a weapons system.
@darius @lana @knowprose @pbloem my son makes jokes that in engineering school they are learning to build weapons or targets.
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@pbloem @mlanger The Bioneer (a fitness influencer with a YouTube channel) has a lot of footage of himself running on trails, such as here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9-thkwnmkA
It's clear that there's something that gets the drone to follow and keep him in frame, and he seems to do an awful lot of the filming himself.
Maybe the drone shots are controlled by another person, but it sure looks like it follows him some other way.
@philipbrewer @pbloem Mine will follow me from any angle. It can take hand signals for instruction. It's really cool. I don't think it uses GPS. I think it locks onto me visually and then just follows from the point of view I indicate. I call it a selfie drone. #DJINeo2
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@mlanger Killing people who are running away from the drone.
If you want to film people you don't need to worry so much about autonomy, or chasing a target that is actively running away, or about doing it without GPS. All the design parameters here scream war.
To be fair: I was slightly hyperbolic. You _could_ use this to film somebody doing a trail run. But in this case, that's not the obvious application.
@pbloem Well, it is the obvious application for my drone, which also does not have guns. Do the drones you're talking about have gun guns?
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@philipbrewer @pbloem Mine will follow me from any angle. It can take hand signals for instruction. It's really cool. I don't think it uses GPS. I think it locks onto me visually and then just follows from the point of view I indicate. I call it a selfie drone. #DJINeo2
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@darius @lana @knowprose @pbloem my son makes jokes that in engineering school they are learning to build weapons or targets.
@ATLeagle @darius @lana @pbloem yup. If they wanted bridges, if people voted for bridges, we would have really cool bridges.
That's not what people vote for. They vote for safety, usually at the expense of everyone's.
Richard Feynman, "The Meaning Of It All: Thoughts of a citizen scientist" is a book i highly recommend. He had to deal with involvement in making The Bomb.
