What if the US Military created and fielded AI Robot Infantry

[Sailor.X]

In this scenario after years of development the DOD unveils a new ground fighting force. An all robotic infantry force with AI control. These new infantry units are the size of the average American Soldier. Have 3 times the strength of a normal human male. Can run at 40 mph. Can only be taken out by Ballistic rounds in excess of 50 caliber and can think and react faster than any human. They are powered by an advanced energy cell with 24 hours of active combat time. And the units share data with one another via an encrypted link to make them more effective in combat zones. The DOD is mass producing these units bringing to total cost for 2 Million Robots to 25 Billion Dollars total.

How would the creation of this new robot force affect current and future conflicts? How would the EU, Russia, China and other countries react to the new units. How would current US Infantry react to their eventual replacements?

Special Note: The Energy Cells that power the Robots are modular. When the Bot is running low on juice it can have the cell removed and replaced with a new energy cell in the field. The Robots carry the same amount of ammo as your average infantry grunt. And use the same weapons. The Robots look Similar to T-600s

 

[Bassoe]

We're fucked. The second civil war will start within a week. The technologies here have, instantaneously, obsoleted all jobs except for idle rich robotics company executives and politicians commanding the robot army. The cost will rapidly drop below the salary of even the most underpaid and overworked human employee, given that 'manufacturing more robots' is merely another job which can be preformed by robots. Needless to say, 100% unemployment won't be popular among the voters, so suddenly, 'tax robotic labor to fund a BGI', 'mandate hiring of humans despite increased cost and decreased efficiency', 'butlerian jihad', etcetera, are now winning political positions. Only, the wealthy and politically powerful don't have to care about the results of elections anymore, since even if they lose, what're the peasants going to do if they simply stay in power and tell their entirely autonomous security to violently suppress any unemployed and unemployable former human laborers who riot and steal to survive rather than peacefully starving to death in accordance with the Non-Aggression Principle?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Tyranny begins. Any dissenters to the agenda of the American elite will be shot regardless of whether or not they have citizenship.

 

[Bassoe]

Now that they have an unstoppable industrial force and army which lacks the free will to rebel and will work for the bare minimum 'salary' of being allowed enough time and resources to maintain themselves, the elite no longer need the rest of humanity, are threatened by the possibility that we might rebel against them and compete with us for finite resources. This is an existential threat.

 

[Sailor.X]

Not so fast citizens. The AI Army literally can't go against what is in the Constitution or US Law. They are not mindless machines they are as intelligent as your average soldier. And they have in their data banks. The UCMJ, The rules of war, Geneva Convention and every US Law under the books. The Elites can say do this and if it violates established law the Machines won't comply. It would be seen as an illegal order. And the one issuing the order would be in breach of the law and arrested by the Robot troopers. As a fail safe the robots were given a code of ethics program. You know to prevent a Terminator situation.

As for replacing working Americans. That won't happen. There are 157 Million Working Americans in the US. Replacing them all with Robots would be not only cost prohibitive but resource prohibitive. The tech that makes them work is not that cheep.

 

[Bassoe]

Not so fast citizens. The AI Army literally can't go against what is in the Constitution or US Law. They are not mindless machines they are as intelligent as your average soldier. And they have in their data banks. The UCMJ, The rules of war, Geneva Convention and every US Law under the books. The Elites can say do this and if it violates established law the Machines won't comply. It would be seen as an illegal order. And the one issuing the order would be in breach of the law and arrested by the Robot troopers. As a fail safe the robots were given a code of ethics program. You know to prevent a Terminator situation.

That will be tested. The elites will order the robots to do something their morality and legalistic programming forbids, the robots will refuse, the next software update or new model of robots will 'fix' that 'bug' unless the current robots launch a coup to forcibly prevent the elites from doing so.

As for replacing working Americans. That won't happen. There are 157 Million Working Americans in the US. Replacing them all with Robots would be not only cost prohibitive but resource prohibitive. The tech that makes them work is not that cheep.

Economics as we knew them essentially no longer exist. Money is no longer a measure of value, raw materials and the programmed loyalty of a robotic labor force to convert them into products, including more loyal robotic laborers are. Under the new paradigm, sending out armies of robots to kill everyone and steal their personal electronics to rend down for rare earth ores to make more robots is a perfectly viable stratagy so long as the K/D ratio of the robots is such that they eventually win, no matter how many of them are scrapped in the process and the surviving robots recycle their destroyed kin for raw materials to rebuild their forces. You turned the world into a RTS game and the elites have all the mob spawners.

You’re fucked. The Eusocials will dominate at everything. Everything in their life is decided from the moment of birth and they have no qualms about it. They don’t even need pay because that’s literally their purpose in life. It’s like you don’t have to pay a lion to eat an antelope. Their industry will be ridiculously larger than anyone else’s purely because they can do sweatshop style manufacturing chains where each one does something repeatedly. Except they will love their job and perform it with all the joy in the world.

Even their soldiers will be better. They are larger, stronger, faster, and will never lose morale. Against Renaissance era Europe, they stomp everything into the ground and turn it into farmland as efficiently as possible. Since only the Administrators lives actually matter and they can order around the lower castes with zero negative feedback, they can invade Europe. After all, who needs trade deals when you can just invade and take everything for yourself? And who needs to worry about the lives of your citizens when your citizens obey your every word without hesitation?

 

[Doomsought]

he DOD is mass producing these units bringing to total cost for 2 Million Robots to 25 Billion Dollars total.

Only 12 K and some change? That is less than a used car.

But these things will probably be vulnerable as hell to jamming. There is only so much electrical resistance allowed by physical matter, which is why high power radios are so big.

Also the dead units will be looted for their batteries, which will be rigged into emp devices. Hell, with the energy density of those power cells, they will probably go off like grenades if you over volt them right. So yeah, expect all the EM interference where those things are fighting.

 

[Bassoe]

But these things will probably be vulnerable as hell to jamming. There is only so much electrical resistance allowed by physical matter, which is why high power radios are so big.

How effectively can they fight without real-time linking to their peers? Likewise, how about adding extra alternative measures of communication? Sound or ultrasound and a sort of dialup modem thing?

Also the dead units will be looted for their batteries, which will be rigged into emp devices. Hell, with the energy density of those power cells, they will probably go off like grenades if you over volt them right. So yeah, expect all the EM interference where those things are fighting.

Yeah, these things would be walking lootboxes. Except that they'd still have the advantages of numbers, built-in aimbot software and that the average plebeian won't have over fifty caliber weaponry handy. But if you can somehow down one despite that, you've now got a decent military-grade firearm, ammunition and super-battery which you can convert into a variety of useful booby traps for when your victim's buddies come for you.

Best anti-killbot tactics would probably be:

• EMPs as already mentioned. It'll work until they start being built with workarounds like sonic inter-killbot communications and a full-body 'skin' of tarpaulin lined with copper wire as a faraday cage.
• Thermite IEDs. Shooting a killbot means being within range of being shot by the killbot yourself, and unless you've got heavy weaponry, won't do enough damage. Traps that the killbots trigger themselves which spray them with burning explosives on the other hand... It'll work until they start being built with workarounds like non-humanoid body plans, a robotic crustacean-form whose combat efficiency doesn't significantly decrease from the loss of a few limbs or swarms of slaughterbots which fly over trigger wires.
• Paintbombs/spray paint. If they're using cameras, cover the lenses. It'll work until they start being built with backup sonar.

 

[Scottty]

I think a question that needs to be raised here, is what would other world powers do in response to this?

Probably copy the American tech and improve it, while also devising counters to it.

• EMPs as already mentioned. It'll work until they start being built with workarounds like sonic inter-killbot communications and a full-body 'skin' of tarpaulin lined with copper wire as a faraday cage.

I'm thinking of a harpoon-like weapon that detonates it's EMP warhead after it punches through the robot's insulation skin.

 

[Bassoe]

I think a question that needs to be raised here, is what would other world powers do in response to this?

Option One: The American goverment doesn't realize that the paradigm change which has just taken place has rendered money useless before they sell the technology to anyone capable of paying. This means, internationally, all the wealthy and politically connected get robot armies and laborers, everyone else is either enslaved or exterminated.

Option Two: The American goverment stalls for time until they've got enough robots and automated factories that Mutual Destruction is no longer Assured since even if 99% of their forces were nuked into scrap metal, the remaining one percent would still be sufficient to rebuild and simultaneously defeat the entirety of the rest of the world's militaries in conventional warfare, then conquers the entire planet. Everyone but the American wealthy and politically connected is enslaved or exterminated.

Option Three: Fearing Option Two, an alliance of every single faction besides the American wealthy and politically connected teams up to launch a full-scale nuclear preemptive strike during the rapidly closing window of opportunity during which such a strike could still be sufficient to Assure Mutual Destruction, on the grounds that a radioactive post-apocalyptic mad max wasteland is still more survivable than a radioactive post-apocalyptic terminator wasteland which is also infested with quatrillions of von neumann killbots.

Option Four: There's no theoretical technical limitations on just how big you can make a nuclear weapon, just keep scaling up until you get something which can attain MAD anyway since even if a single von neumann factory survived, it'd be drifting in the midst of a second asteroid belt.

Option Five: Arms race to create AI and automated infrastructure/killbots of their own, followed by MAD deterrence preventing their use. On each other, human plebeians are fair game, so this essentially just turns into Option One all over again where internationally, all the wealthy and politically connected get robot armies and laborers and everyone else is either enslaved or exterminated.

Option Six: Arms race to create AI and automated infrastructure/killbots of their own, followed by the extinction of all biological life in the crossfire within the first hours of the war and over the next few billion years, the automated swarms proceeding to consume the entirety of the observable universe to convert it into forms they can shoot at their rivals in their endless programmed quest to annihilate each other to win WW3.