Surveillance Drones Over U.S. To Be 30,000 By 2020

YES! I listened to that segment. The speaker said the drones are unprecedented and would require a supreme court decision. I don't know much about AI, but I was shocked at the idea of giving the drone autonomy to choose targets to follow and eliminate. Also surprising was the part where she talked about how fighter pilots don't do well flying or controlling (monitoring) the drones and that people off of the street with video game experience did very well. I believe she said pilots (like herself) got too board and anxious just sitting in a trailer watching screens so the idea of creating a job in the military strictly for people to fly drones is being kicked around. BUT the risk of developing PTS was way higher in non military trained drone pilots. Possibly killing dozens of people in one shot is a lot of weight to carry.

 

Over the US the operator has to be in sight of the drone. Those are the regulations. It isn't by requirement of the drone, but it is by requirements regulating their use in the US. They also have fly below a certain altitude. It is via FAA, and they basically have the same restrictions as remote control planes. It could change and that's when we'll really have to worry.

 

I think I read somewhere that some european countries are considering doing this too.

 

Sorry my bad. I thought you were talking about capabilities not regulations.. That said if that is the regulation it seems like that would greatly handicap some of the beneficial things of drones, such as if you were flying one into a disaster area to look for survivors where it is very dangerous to be sending people in.

 

Well that's true. But maybe those areas will be open enough that a person can be back from the actual site and still see the plane. I don't know it would just be totally situational what they could do with the regulations in place.

 

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Just a bit of irony here. Libertarians would naturally be against the govt. being able to spy on citizens with drones and that kind of big govt. operation.

They are also against plenty of regulations and federal agencies.

Yet it is the federal agency and regulations (FAA) that make it more difficult for the drones to be used as they are over seas reducing their effectiveness as far as spying and things like that.

 

...meanwhile, Google's already monetizing this.