Washington and Beijing are in a contest to develop AI-controlled weapons that will operate autonomously. The outcome could decide the global balance of power.

To meet the demand of a rising China, the Australian Navy is taking two very different deep dives into advanced submarine technology.

One is pricey and slow: For a new force of up to 13 nuclear-powered attack submarines, the Australian taxpayer will fork out an average of more than AUD$28 billion ($18 billion) apiece. And the last of the subs won’t arrive until well past the middle of the century.

The other is cheap and fast: launching three unmanned subs, powered by artificial intelligence, called Ghost Sharks. The navy will spend just over AUD$23 million each for them – less than a tenth of 1% of the cost of each nuclear sub Australia will get. And the Ghost Sharks will be delivered by mid-2025.

  • @[email protected]English
    11•1 year ago

    I’d start a weapons development company if that wasn’t completely against my moral code. I could make so much money.

    • @JustAManOnAToilet
      8•1 year ago

      Just have your weapons only target weaponized robots. You might only make some billions instead of many billions, but you could stay within your moral code.

    • Pirky
      4•1 year ago

      I was thinking more like Horizon: Zero Dawn, but Skynet is also very fitting.

  • @MD756
    8•1 year ago

    Surely this will end in world peace.

    • @AllonzeeLV
      2•1 year ago

      It will if the machines destroy humanity.

      There can be no world peace so long as humanity exists, we’ve proven that throughout our history.

  • @AllonzeeLV
    5•1 year ago

    Honestly, Skynet is the best case scenario humanity can hope for.

    Either it will finally unite humanity against a common enemy, or if we truly lack the capacity to do so as we claim, put this failed mutation out of its self-inflicted misery and let nature start again.

    It’s in our nature to destroy ourselves, why should I root for our species of cruel little gremlins to continue to propagate misery upon eachother and all other terran life in the name of greed and selfishness in perpetuity? Fuck the home team.