Even without nefarious goals, a drone can simply malfunction and drop on someone's head, which is already dangerous. But if 1 out of 1000 drones is programmed to do something malicious, how would our legal systems address it? Do we even have a system that could prevent something like that? We've never had to deal with autonomous robots roaming among people before.
What I'm most afraid of is the arms race of drones. It will happen before the AI arms race that Hawking and Musk warn about: http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/27/artificially-assured-destru...
There are already millions of "drones" out in the world more then capable of doing all of the terrible things you can imagine and yet they don't because there are easier ways to do evil and people who have the desire to do bad things generally choose the easier route.
I would also like to point out Cars kill 38k+ people per year in the US and could also be used for all sorts of bad things (like running people over) should we be worried about all of those imported cars too? Autonomous cars could be instructed to run over a lot of people! Ban Cars!
I'm from Europe and I can see what's happening. China starts making progress so US starts jeering every twist and turn. Give it a rest already. Same happened way back with Japan and all the jokes made back then.
Here's a story from 2011 about the Chinese building a supercomputer based on its own tech. Name me how many countries have done that? So, can I just ask HN comment people to please stop with the comments like this, it's gone beyond tiresome to annoying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/world/asia/china-unveils-s...
So am I, but your parent is not being sardonically racist at all.
It would make sense if they were so ahead of the curve that everyone was clamoring to get the stuff and in which case the restrictions on the top end stuff would make sense but as it is I don't think they're in that kind of position. Manufacturing wise they might be but not in terms of R&D.
For that matter I'm really curious which countries are clamoring for Chinese supercomputers and drones?
As for the history of Chinese industrialization I honestly don't see how that matters when it comes to setting export limits. It is purely a trade issue and usually when exports are limited in this fashion it is because the technology is perceived to provide some kind of advantage to whoever has it. Cryptography software comes to mind as a good example of something that the U.S. government tried to control with export laws for a long time. Carrying that analogy forward I don't see how supercomputers or drones provide any kind of advantage since most countries I can think of that could benefit from buying the technology from China do not pose a threat to it and those that wouldn't be buying from China and instead building things in-house are already equal to or beyond China's capabilities. The export limit in both instances is counter-intuitive because nobody wins from this arrangement.
Also pictured in article are toy quadcopters.
"From August 15, manufacturers of certain powerful drones and computers will have to give technical details to the authorities to obtain a licence prior to export, Xinhua news agency says.
The new regulations from the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs are aimed in particular at drones which can fly for more than one hour and at heights of more than 15,420 metres."
So basically, drones powered by internal combustion engines need to be design-certified.
