Or just hacking. These things are going to be some vibe-coded, cheaply made junk if the billionaires and their corner-cutting corporations have anything to say about it. Sure they’ll be intimidating as hell at first, but exploits and weaknesses will be found and the arms race isn’t going to be as completely one-sided as we fear. Not that the other sides are going to be any better. I’m more worried about the criminals who’re going to be building a literal botnet of them before turning them into their own army of chaos and insanity at the flip of a switch. “Attention! I am a hacker who has your apartment building surrounded by my remote controlled battlemechs, please have all residents send a total of 15 BTC to wallet address cdsjfkejiwoejfsiadjfkalsdf if you want to live. Do not bother contacting the police, these used to be their robots anyway and I’ve got them surrounded too… they can’t help you now.”
The issue with that is that computing resources, while cheap, have incredibly expensive supply chains dominated by these billionaires; we might not have the resources for hacking if we don’t strike hard and fast and take them out before they get too entrenched.
Or just hacking. These things are going to be some vibe-coded, cheaply made junk if the billionaires and their corner-cutting corporations have anything to say about it. Sure they’ll be intimidating as hell at first, but exploits and weaknesses will be found and the arms race isn’t going to be as completely one-sided as we fear. Not that the other sides are going to be any better. I’m more worried about the criminals who’re going to be building a literal botnet of them before turning them into their own army of chaos and insanity at the flip of a switch. “Attention! I am a hacker who has your apartment building surrounded by my remote controlled battlemechs, please have all residents send a total of 15 BTC to wallet address cdsjfkejiwoejfsiadjfkalsdf if you want to live. Do not bother contacting the police, these used to be their robots anyway and I’ve got them surrounded too… they can’t help you now.”
The issue with that is that computing resources, while cheap, have incredibly expensive supply chains dominated by these billionaires; we might not have the resources for hacking if we don’t strike hard and fast and take them out before they get too entrenched.