‘Slaughterbot’ film warns tiny drones could carry out murders

CGI of the drones being deployed from a plane
Mark Blunden @_MarkBlunden20 November 2017

Swarms of tiny drones flown by artificial intelligence and programmed to assassinate human targets using a few grams of explosives have been forecast by a British academic in a dystopian short film.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) called Slaughterbots are the subject of a collaboration between AI expert Professor Stuart Russell and the Future of Life Institute, an AI watchdog supported by Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

The seven-minute video starts with an Apple-style keynote presentation and shows palm-sized UAVs carrying facial recognition technology and explosives to commit untraceable civilian massacres.

The microdrones, modified versions of toy gadgets now on sale for £20, have reactions 100 times faster than soldiers.

The film shows the weapons targeting politicians and tracking people by their social media posts.

Professor Russell, an AI expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “Allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT