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How is it even considered revolutionary consciousness when it is a rather poor and extremely inefficient copy of our brain which we are still working on fully understanding? It's not even close to that
A race between the awakening of collective consciousness to the urgent need for revolutionary change on one hand, and the technological ability to quash a people’s rebellion on the other.
Lol, well that one's on me, I suppose I've seen too many AI articles trying to gaslight me into thinking it's conscious and assumed it was another
What made you assume that?
The biggest question is why population will be needed at all. When production and warfare are done by robots, population is just a burden and should be exterminated.
The robots will war against each other.
For sure, after removing all humans from face of the Earth.
Are you human?
Yes, and it worries me.
Well, then we must stand up for humanity and make sure the best qualities of our species are not lost to techno-oppression and transhumanism.
Is there a term for an argument that goes 'this thing is possible, therefore it is inevitable'?
In short, she's saying that robots in the near future could be deployed by our rulers in numbers enough to keep the population suppressed.
I don't agree. First up, killer robots are already here. Drones in Ukraine have already killed troops acting autonomously.
But at a scale to suppress the masses? No. Our evil overlords in this scenario need either enough henchmen (I'm talking 1,000,000) to control these robotic armies or the knowledge and expertise themselves to do it. They would also need a lot of these loyal passionless robots. More than 1:1, because I'd take 100 humans against 100 robots any day.
The overlords need a support network of millions of people. People to provide construction, maintenance and repair to the robots. People to program them. People to be a defense system against physical and electronic attacks on the infrastructure. In short, people to turn them off and on again when they have issues.
There's no picture where I can see 1,000 billionaire oligarchs suppressing 10 billion people with a massive fleet of robots.
There's no picture where I can see 1,000 billionaire oligarchs suppressing 10 billion people with a massive fleet of robots.
Possibly there's an option where said oligarchs suppress 3 billion angry people with the aid of 7 billion brainwashed people who think their status quo is the best way forward.
While this is indeed far more plausible, it wasn't her argument. She said that once they had their robot armies, they would no longer need to rely on millions of loyal (or brainwashed) people to prop them up.
The dispassionate robots would obey their orders and keep everyone in line.
First up, killer robots are already here. Drones in Ukraine have already killed troops acting autonomously.
And there's a real difference between weapons being used in international warfare, and being normalised in local police forces. Police purchase weapons with intent for [potential] use against civilians of their own region, and history consistently shows weapons intended for (e.g.) hostage situations eventually making their way into regular use against the most basic resistance, like tear gas and riot control ammunition being used and abused in Australian protests. I mention 'abused', an example of this abuse would be using a round designed for long range hits to the chest being deployed at close range to the head.
So when I see police forces doing PR on these robotic weapons, I am threatened. I fully expect these to be deployed against citizen protests, even if they don't fire metal ammunition.
[robots vs. masses]
I'm getting an impression that you're picturing an all-out human revolution against the billionaire oligarchs - a world in which the "revolutionary consciousness" Johnstone mentioned is already universal. But I don't believe oligarchs need to directly suppress 10 billion people. They already have a position of dominance over much of our existing political state, through political donation and mass media influence and institutional pull of essential businesses and more, their power over the state is not just limited to the Liberal Party and One Nation. And that state includes the police force who are more-or-less governed by the laws our politicians enact.
The biggest individual marches Australia has seen would be around 100,000 to 300,000 people, such as the 2025 March for Humanity, the 2003 anti-war protests and the Corroboree 2000 Walk for Reconciliation, all in Sydney. The March for Humanity had a helicopter and mounted units present, and there was at least one drone, although I'm not certain whether or not it was police-operated. But I don't believe it's the kind of event where robot weapons would be deployed for crowdwork.
How about events where some people expect police to violently suppress... weapons exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. To be clear, this is still not an event where metal ammunition would be expected, but crowd-control weapons and violence are expected, so you might get protesters with the education, preparation and will to disable a robotic weapon. We're seeing numbers closer to "hundreds", at best maybe "thousands" but most of that crowd will disperse at the first signs of coordinated police aggression. Even if we assume no guns on the robots, I wouldn't even put this crowd at 1:1 odds in this scenario, unless they can very effectively use remote vulnerabilities (electronics jamming, paint bombing). I'd expect even a dozen robots deployed, alongside officers, would intimidate most of the crowd, and if you're allowed to add rubber bullets and tear gas to them, then it's a bloodbath.
But maybe I'm pessimistic or thinking too short-term, where most people today are living lives where an uprising isn't on the table. Let's assume ten percent of the population is rapidly educated, organised and mobilised against the state after a Bloody Sunday-type incident.
Firstly, I see no reason that such robots can't be industrially mass-produced and therefore could be somewhat expendable. A protestor flips the bot over like a tortoise? The operator can just start controlling a reserve bot that was waiting nearby on standby. A bot flips a protestor on their back? That could be days or weeks in a hospital. So it really is asymmetric warfare, even if we could each win 1:1 in a battle.
Another advantage of those robotic weapons is they can be remotely controlled - if an uprising occurs in Melbourne, teams of trained operators (e.g. some police and military) in all other cities could contribute to controlling the robot weapons. Depending on acceptable lag, they could even be controlled internationally, although maybe that's not as feasible in Australia if the robots aren't semi-autonomous. So to divide those resources, there would need to be widespread uprising to strain, or better yet, target the operators in many locations simultaneously.
My point being, I don't see a situation where 1,000 oligarchs would need to directly battle 10 billion people. They would need governments to turn against them first.
I agree with you, eureka.
We cannot fall in the moral and ethical abyss of the unquestioning use of machines/robots from killer drones to crowd control bots to pet replacement bots for the elderly with dementia, and on and on. The more technologies advance, the more insidious their use will become. We started with a bit of surveillance technology and look where we are now and where we are very likely to be. We cannot be silent about this.
They're going to be police 'dogs'. Don't need a million of them when they're integrated into the police state.