The Battle is Joined

I was saving that one for you! :slight_smile:

Mosquito sized drone:
Call out the SWAT team!
Deploy ChatDDT!

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How long can they fly? How far can they transmit? I suspect it is up against physical limits when it comes to both (unless powered by RTG’s like outer solar system probes).

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Yeah…the most useful kind of enemy (for a government seeking control of the citizenry) is an INVISIBLE enemy! Or a seemingly innocuous but ubiquitous one, like this insect-drone. It could be anywhere, in fact it IS everywhere! And you can’t see it, or you won’t know it if you do see it, We’ll try to help you, but you MUST do exactly what we say! Case in Point: Covid 19.
Forget Operation Golden Dome: what we need now is Operation Golden Screen Door! Operation Gilded Flypaper!

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Good ones! :slight_smile:

A thought just occurred to me: A mini-EMP might be the only effective way of taking out these micro-drones. Maybe we all need to “stop worrying and embrace the bomb”. Note to self: Watch Dr. Strangelove tonight.

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All good questions…I don’t know…but I suspect we’re going to find out sooner rather than later! :neutral_face:

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There is a 2017 short fictional film about palm sized drones called Slaughterbots.

Daniel Suarez’s book Kill Decision has drones that resemble ants or wasps that operate in swarms.

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Whenever people start worrying that all this Bot and AI stuff might ultimately be, [gasp] a threat to humans—
I think: DUH.
I mean we have been science-fantasizing about that for decades, right? They ALWAYS turn on us. We (by which I mean the brilliant humans who create these things) know that’s what will happen. Sooooo, whether intentionally or not, we built that bias into them. They’re programmed to do it!

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… a mosquito-like flying robot designed for stealth missions …

This reminds me of Cixin Lu’s SF story “The Dark Forest”, where Earth’s efforts to prepare for invasion by the TriSolarians were compromised by the high-tech TriSolarians’ ability to monitor all discussions on Earth in real time. What to do?

The response was to select a number of “Wall-facers” who were given carte-blanche to prepare counters to the expected invasion … but were prohibited from telling anyone what their plans were.

From the sword and the shield onwards, every new offensive capability has spawned a defensive counter.

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Yes, indeed! Drone swarms will be the bane of security (especially the not-so-Secret Service) experts everywhere. Until there are portable and highly-reliable directed energy defenses - capable of many, rapid, accurate discharges - outdoor gatherings will be high risk undertakings going forward. That risk applies to principals and attendees both. Methinks swarms and EMP’s - if not necessarily existential threats - effectively signal the end of ordinary low-risk life as we have known it.

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We’re certainly living in unprecedented times. Another sign is that we cannot automatically believe everything we see (e.g. video or article) or hear (e.g. voice recording) anymore as it can be so easily faked by AI.

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I read about the voice-faking, how you might get a call from your child or spouse in his or her voice, saying that they’ve been kidnapped. I mean, unless that person happened to be sitting in the room with you when you get the call, can you IMAGINE the panic?
It maybe tine for the anti-machine jihad which is the backstory of the Dune novels.

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I also wonder how this will affect the court system: If AI generated audio and video are truly indistinguishable from real recordings, what are the implications regarding the legal standards of “beyond a reasonable doubt” and “preponderance of the evidence”?

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All evidence must be authenticated. If the party against whom it’s sought to be introduced won’t admit authorship, you have to,look at other marks of authenticity, possibly relating to the content. It’s not a new problem.

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I would put the risk of deep fakes at or near the very top of risks. We all should know that the media has taken real information and distorted it to drive a narrative. The George Floyd riots were an example of what the media is able to achieve through manipulation. They selectively edited a video to push a narrative.

This isn’t new. They constantly take snippets (sometimes edited down to less than a full sentence) of politicians talking to drive a narrative.

Deep fakes will allow them to drive narratives like never before.

They will be used on social media with great effect, but not as impactful as the “news”.

The problem with manipulation is that everyone thinks others can be manipulated but not themselves.

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The attempted erasure of binary human sexuality is probably the worst example and is simply evil. If the state/corporation/“media” complex can arbitrarily re-define “man” and “woman”, they can re-define anything. Biblical babel, with frank delusion remade into objective reality. This is so pernicious I can barely stand to consider it or the consequences.

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I agree. I used to argue:
words have a certain meaning, you can’t just Humpty Dumpty assign a new one. “Marriage” for example, and “pregnancy”. The govt could insist that couples, both parties, waiting to bring an adopted baby home be referred to as “pregnant”,upon pain of fine or imprisonment. But it wouldn’t alter the fact that only ONE person, the birth mother, IS actually pregnant, in that scenario.

But over the last few years I’da been afraid to argue that. It isn’t implausible under the “B. Hussein via Bygone “ administration that Congress might have actually passed such a law…

Another thing is, brainwashing is a trick, and we all know by this time how it works, how you can bring the subjects to the point where they’ll say 2+2=5.

But usually with a trick or illusion, it doesn’t work, doesn’t fool people, after the mechanism is exposed and they know how it’s done.
These patently false, nay, ludicrous, assertions concerning gender still seem to be working, every time…..

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I guess we better buy more ammo! ROFL! :rofl: </sarcasm>