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Slaughterbots

Future of Life Institute
Other
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this video2 months2018–2025 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN cites it whenever drone swarms or autonomous weapons come up, as a dramatized warning that now feels increasingly plausible.

An 8-minute fictional short film, made by campaigners for a ban on autonomous weapons, depicting swarms of cheap AI-guided micro-drones used to kill targeted people. It ends with a call to action against autonomous weapons.

“7 years ago, this felt like science fiction” (HN, 2025)

2 recommendations · 8 citations · 1 critical · 1 jokes · Other

12 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@pierrec Oct 2018 Recommends
on HN thread The Era of the Drone Swarm Is Coming
I'm surprised there's no mention of the short film "Slaughterbots" on this exact topic: [this video] It's very well done and has an HN vibe to it (with a dark twist, of course).
Very well done short film with an HN vibe
@amarcheschi Dec 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Slaughterbots – if human: kill() [video]
There is another slaughterbots video that's worth watching, [this video] There's also a real video by anduril industries about this not anymore fictional scenario [link]
Another Slaughterbots video worth watching on autonomous killer drones.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@fabianhjr Apr 2018 Cites it
on HN thread Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
The problem emerges when an actor most become a monster to win, sort of like Mutually Assured Destruction. I think that scifi shorts have the duty and power to show us the paths that certain developments entail. For example: - Slaughterbots: [this video] - Last Day of War: [link]
Sci-fi short showing paths of developments
@Diederich Jan 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Drone Swarms Are Getting Too Fast for Humans to Fight, U.S. General Warns
I know it is rather sensationalized, but how far off is this kind of technology? [this video] "Slaughterbots" posted in 2017. If I had to guess, I'd say that the tiny drones in this video still aren't capable of carrying the computational horsepower necessary for a lot of the activities portrayed. But...isn't it really a matter of time?
Sensationalized but raises how near the technology is
@tgsovlerkhgsel Jul 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Killer Flying Robots Are Here. What Do We Do Now?
Killer bees are in S02E06 "Hated in the Nation", [link] There is another one with killer dogs in an apocalyptic wasteland (in black and white), S04E05 "Metalhead". The short film "Slaughterbots" ( [this video] ) fits it even more precisely though, I'd say.
Fictional short film about swarms of autonomous killer drones.
@imglorp Apr 2022 Cites it
on HN thread A story about planning for Desert Storm
I think it depends, right? If you have a small number of high cost, high impact UAVs, you will target infra and supply columns. If you happen to have a cargo plane full of cheap, mass produced head-popper slaughterbots which you can dump over a town, they will remove all the humans and leave you with intact buildings, vehicles, and infra. [this video]
Depicts cheap mass-produced drones killing humans while leaving infrastructure intact.
@runlevel1 Jun 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Axon wants to make taser drones for schools despite ethics board’s concerns
Why require RF at all? An attacker could give the drone a location they know their target will be at and let the drone autonomously guide itself to the target. [This dramatization][^1] focuses on full autonomy, but I'd argue it applies just as much to the steps leading up to it. All the more reason to take this threat seriously now. [1]: [this video]
Dramatization of fully autonomous attack drones and why the threat is serious.
@echelon Jun 2025 Cites it
on HN thread YOLO-World: Real-Time Open-Vocabulary Object Detection
7 years ago, this felt like science fiction: [this video] Now that we've seen the use of drones in the Ukraine war, 10k+ drone light shows, Waymo's autonomous cars, and tons of AI advancements in signals processing and planning, this seems obvious.
Once-fictional film on autonomous drones that now seems plausible.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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