Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.

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throw4847285 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You say that now, but once we perfect AMBAC technology and accidentally release large numbers of Minovsky particles, we will need humanoid combat vehicles to fight our battles!

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SecretDreams an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.

If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place. Tesla probably wouldn't be worth 1.2T. And we certainly wouldn't see AI buildouts happening at their current rates.

Economics and costs only matter for normal humans, small countries, and efforts that might actually help humanity. They're not seemingly considerations in nefarious applications.

	▲	DennisP 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It matters quite a bit. If your drone costs $1000, you can build a thousand times more of them than if a drone costs $1M. As the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own. This is a lesson the US has yet to learn, and its military drones are really expensive. Ukraine learned it by necessity, and now it's building millions of drones annually.

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Terr_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or they might decide to, er, pre-deliver the payloads.

"Citizen, congratulations on reaching your age of majority. Report for your Patriotic Assurance Implant at surgical bay 43B."

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trhway 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Autonomous suicide drone swarms are easily countered by autonomous interceptor swarms.

>Marching humanoid terminator robots

ground bots, not necessarily marching, do have their value. They can have bulletproof armor, while still be relatively lightweight and small and fast. They can easily carry even 20-25mm autocannon - very destructive weapon, sometimes can even succeed against a real tank.

And imagine when a swarm of drones lifts a ground bot, brings and drops it right into the needed point and protects it from the enemy drones while the ground bot just destructs the things around. Synergy between different weapons system has always been the super-weapon.

	▲	DennisP 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They can also sit in one spot guarding a position without using much battery. Ukraine recently took territory from Russian forces using ground bots, the first time it's been done without using soldiers on the ground. Now they're starting to scale the bots up to mass production.