Unknown: Killer Robots

It's somewhat confused about whether it wants to present AI used for defense as a moral threat or necessary "for the safety of our nation." Many groans during this documentary.

As such it comes across as propaganda designed to lead the viewer to the tired trope: "it's frightening but our adversaries are developing it too." and "one nation will not agree..". The audience groans knowing which nation that will be. Namely the one in the documentary.

Protagonists such as the Navy Seal guy (clearly a psychopath) is presented as reasonable voice, yet for most viewers imbues a deep sense of immorality.

A Secretary of Defense talks about "saving lives," whilst a Lockheed Martin employee talks about wildfires. This insults our intelligence. Human not artificial.

Netflix scores another propaganda hit.

I love the part where Emilia says she's really optimistic about the future because of the Biological Weapon Convention. Nice video of President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Rogers walking into a meeting. How the USA and the communist (USSR) signed a treaty to do away with biological weapons and research. Ha!!! Read the book SPIES that just came out by Calder Walton. Based on the files smuggled out of the USSR the communist NEVER stopped working on biological weapons. We were suckers to believe that they would. Do not think for one second that the bad guys will abide by any LAWS.

Another thing. Why do I have to use so many different words to be able to post a comment.

So apparently they used a bunch of youtube videos without the creators' consent (like LowkoTV) to create this documentary and now make money essentially streaming the work of others on Netflix. You are highly mistaken if you believe a penny went to the original creators. Not even a dime, actually. Unethical, illegal and therefore not worth a minute of anyone's time.

You would think that at that point even in 2023 people have already learnt enough about AI to assess the implications and risks. Like many documentaries, however, this one does not talk about specific applications of AI, instead focusing on general information one could get by... asking AI (ironic, I know). I suppose it's good for people new to the technology world, but on the other hand, is it really?

This is probably the worst of the various ham handed Netflix documentaries I have seen. It is simple minded and well behind the curve on potential issues with AI. In fact it conflates AGI (artificial general intelligence), with AI (artificial intelligence). And it portrays usage in warfighting the main threat. When existential threats are much more likely to come from general population, and in areas seemingly benign compared to warfighting.

Frankly a listen to any couple of lex fridman podcast with the top AI thinkers will teach the average person a lot more, and a lot more accurately about the issue.

Case in point: this documentary frets about AI making decisions about who to attack on the battlespace, which it calls a life or death decision. With zero AI 18 and 19-year olds were already already making such decisions for thousands of years, and from up to half a world away using non AI attack drones for the past 20 and 30 years. AI and algorithms have been demonstrated to make better decisions on that. In fact even in policing AI algorithms have been shown to be profoundly less biased than even expert humans And the existential threat to humans from AI is actually in the most banal of applications, not warfare. Tell an enabled and non-aligned (AI "alignment" is elusive goal of getting AI aligned with human interests) AI to produce as many paper clips as possible and an AI system may turn all atoms on earth into paper clips.

I would skip this nonsense dumbed down junk documentary.

I was was watching the doc fine until I saw Andrew Yang, who was described as a politician (he never held any elected office; he ran a hopeless presidential campaing once to make his face known, and ran for NY mayor. In our age where everyone gets a trophy for joining a race, Adrew is a perfect fit :) ) and a tech entrepreneur (he has never been one; he once ran a non-profit which achived nothing, and anither time sold Kaplan books). There are zillions of people who worked in AI robotics and did great things, but this doc decided to air Andrew Yang, and it lost credibility for me at that moment.