THE VIDEO SHELF · autonomous weapons
Slaughterbots
An 8-minute fictional short film, made by campaigners for a ban on autonomous weapons, depicting swarms of cheap AI-guided micro-drones used to kill targeted people. It ends with a call to action against autonomous weapons.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN cites it whenever drone swarms or autonomous weapons come up, as a dramatized warning that now feels increasingly plausible.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Future of Life Institute
- Topic
- autonomous weapons
- Format
- other
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 12
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2018–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
I'm surprised there's no mention of the short film "Slaughterbots" on this exact topic: [VIDEO] It's very well done and has an HN vibe to it (with a dark twist, of course).
pierrec on Hacker News · 2018-10
In The Era of the Drone Swarm Is ComingThere is another slaughterbots video that's worth watching, [VIDEO] There's also a real video by anduril industries about this not anymore fictional scenario [LINK]
amarcheschi on Hacker News · 2024-12
In Slaughterbots – if human: kill() [video]
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.
