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Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

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628 points nodea2345 | 6 comments | 01 Oct 19 11:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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nvahalik ◴[01 Oct 19 13:30 UTC] No.21125093[source]▶
> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator

This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".

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Fezzik ◴[01 Oct 19 15:03 UTC] No.21126073[source]▶
I always find this sentiment a little silly - if the US President went in to full dictator mode and had the support of the military, do you really think a militia of armed citizens would be anything but gnats against the windshield of the United States Armed Forces? And if s/he did not have the support of the Armed Forces, it would not be a very effective dictatorship and you would not even need guns for a rebellion. I truly do not get it.
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markstos ◴[01 Oct 19 15:08 UTC] No.21126144[source]▶
The US Armed Forces is made up of people, many of which would not support a self-appointed dictator attacking their own people.
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1. hnuser54 ◴[01 Oct 19 15:16 UTC] No.21126249[source]▶
The rise of killer death robots like Boston Dynamics definitely changes this dynamic. A handful of people in charge of the robots could order them to murder whomever with little oversight or room for ethical qualms on the part of the "soldiers".
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2. samsolomon ◴[01 Oct 19 15:25 UTC] No.21126393[source]▶
This is actually something I've thought a good bit about. As robots become more militaristic, an armed populace becomes less of a threat to their government. There's a good sci-fi story in there somewhere.
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3. chongli ◴[01 Oct 19 15:31 UTC] No.21126472[source]▶
It’s not a question of whether the robots could attack and kill people, it’s a question of whether they could defend the dictator’s interests. In a protracted guerrilla war against survivalist Americans with machine guns and large stashes of preserved food, not to mention access to tons of technology? I doubt it.

It’s not very difficult to attach a hand grenade (or even a pipe bomb) to a quadcopter drone and use it to attack a military checkpoint or a politician’s entourage. It’s simply much harder to defend than it is to attack nowadays, and centralized power is offset by scattered, decentralized resistance.

Finally, you might be able to convince a unit based in one state to attack another, but you’re unlikely to have the loyalty of all generals in a civil war.

4. chongli ◴[01 Oct 19 15:38 UTC] No.21126580[source]▶
I disagree. I think robots will actually decentralize power. The key to all of this is software which, as we’ve seen, is effectively impossible to lock up. So I think what you’ll see is the proliferation of cheap, effective drones armed with explosives that are extremely difficult to defend against.

We’re seeing this play out in the Middle East, most recently with a drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil production.

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5. hnuser54 ◴[01 Oct 19 16:51 UTC] No.21127621{3}[source]▶
I definitely support civilian ownership of self-defense robots. But for them to be affordable (or maybe even possible), there needs to be substantial production of non-defense humanoid robots like robot maids to build up the supply chain. Even then humanoid robots have a lot more moving parts so they'll never be as cheap as today's civilian drones.
6. elsonrodriguez ◴[01 Oct 19 17:38 UTC] No.21128218[source]▶
It's not so much the murder-bots, as it is the murder-bots in combination with the farming-bots, builder-bots, and general servant-bots.

If the rich and powerful consolidate autonomous labor under their control, this removes the self-interest of keeping people around, and would allow them to unleash whatever level of violence is needed, all the way up to genocide.