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THE VIDEO SHELF · autonomous weapons

Daniel Suarez: The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot

Novelist Daniel Suarez warns in a TED talk about autonomous robotic weapons and drones. He argues that taking the decision to kill out of human hands threatens democratic accountability and calls for a ban.

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Why HN readers recommended it

Plugged repeatedly in AI and drone threads as a concise statement of the dangers of automated weapons.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
TED
Topic
autonomous weapons
Format
talk
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
3
HN mentions in dataset
6
Recommendation years in dataset
2013–2025

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.

  • There's likely a slippery slope fallacy in there somewhere (I hope). If interested in the (not so) sci-fi aspects of automated weapons and their ramifications, I often plug Daniel Suarez's great Kill Decision talk and book: [VIDEO]

    jameslk on Hacker News · 2025-08
    In AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

  • This is only going to get worse if they make drones autonomous, which this TED talk shows they have a lot of reasons for why they will want to make them autonomous, unless there's huge public outcry demanding a ban: [VIDEO]

    salient on Hacker News · 2013-12
    In I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

  • When you see governments already contemplating killing people based on algorithms, you begin to empathize with Musk about calling AI a "demon" that we're summoning: [LINK] However right now I'm much more afraid of governments "setting loose" autonomous killer robots than I am about Skynet-like …

    higherpurpose on Hacker News · 2014-10
    In Musk warns of 'summoning the demon' with AI

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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