An autonomous drone with kamikaze tendencies hunted down (and potentially killed or at least injured) retreating soldiers during a battle in Libya last year. Key point: without any input from its handler.
According to a report by the United Nations, a Kargu-2 drone was used in Libya last year to autonomously target soldiers in the Haftar Armed Forces.
The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true “fire, forget and find” capability.
Because fighting a war should definitely be as convenient as setting a Roomba.
The use of drones in warfare isn’t particularly new, but the Kargu-2 (produced in Turkey) uses facial recognition and machine learning to decide what/who it will attack, and it can do so without any input from its handler – convenient. It causes damage by self-destructing when near the target. If that wasn’t horrifying enough, multiple drones can come together to form a kamikaze death swarm. For when you need to combat those really stubborn insurgents.
The report mentions that this particular battle resulted in “significant casualties”, but doesn’t specify how many were attributed to the murder-bots. I miss when worrying about the robot apocalypse only involved making fun of Boston Dynamics and that robot you can stab for stress relief.
Via Gizmodo.