Should hunting be allowed with new AI sight?

[3Crows]

This is sport hunting, what equipment should and should not be allowed is completely arbitrary. The only truly fair chase would be to show up naked and empty handed, but that is equally absurd.

Nude hunting, well, that would sort of be rather sporting and considered odd. Brings back memory of the Seinfeld episode wherein George suffered shrinkage after a cold swim.

But seriously, one thing that differentiates the human animal from the herd is that we have the capability to create and use technology.

In photography there is a concern with auto-focus lag and missing shots. Trigger lag due to probability of a hit calculation, the animal will probably be gone by the time the AI decides it is okay to send the bullet thus missing shots.

 

[Howland937]

Maybe I'll change as I get older, but currently I try to avoid a lot of the things that "do it for me". I have no want for a car that drives itself or a gun that shoots itself (even though some try to convince us they all do). I haven't quit hunting, I just haven't hunted in recent years. While rangefinders, GPS, ballistic apps and other tech have enhanced some folks' experience and perhaps made them better hunters, I never needed any of that for any of the hunting I've done. In the current times of game farms, hunting over bait, food plots, deer behavior prediction apps, etc... there's already too much emphasis on the kill and not the hunt.

 

[mcb]

The discussion is really not about what we as individuals chose to hunt with, but what limitations do we put on the collective group of hunters for any given pursuit. If we pass a law say that during modern rifle deer season magnified optics are illegal to hunt with that is a very different thing, than a hunter personally choosing to hunt only with iron sights.

 

[W.E.G.]

I don't find it interesting or appealing.

But, I'm against government bans on almost anything.

Moreover, that thing isn't going to get a kid out of bed at 4:00 a.m., or gut the deer, or drag it out, or butcher it.
Or pay for the freezer to store it.

I just want to be left alone.

The government can GTH.

 

[theotherwaldo]

I took my first deer with a thrown rock.
Is that low tech enough for you?

 

[courtgreene]

I took my first deer with a thrown rock.
Is that low tech enough for you?

I would very much like to hear the story that further informs this claim. I’m not doubting it, I just want to know more.

 

[courtgreene]

I didn’t vote, but as I read the responses and considered the idea of the “new”* tech, one thought kept surfacing in my mind. Automatic transmissions.
When everyone started driving automatics, driving stopped being an activity with which people actively engaged. “Yeah, yeah I’ll slow down and not wreck after I hit send.” The safety concern of shooting while depending on technology to do the thinking is what I don’t like.

*these aren’t really new, as was mentioned above

 

[mcb]

I didn’t vote, but as I read the responses and considered the idea of the “new”* tech, one thought kept surfacing in my mind. Automatic transmissions.
When everyone started driving automatics, driving stopped being an activity with which people actively engaged. “Yeah, yeah I’ll slow down and not wreck after I hit send.” The safety concern of shooting while depending on technology to do the thinking is what I don’t like.

*these aren’t really new, as was mentioned above

Why not go back to transmissions without synchro-mesh gears so you have to double clutch and rev match during shifts (lets make drivers really focus on those shifts), or carburetors with manual chokes or ignition systems with manual timing advance adjustment? The junction between manual and automatic transmissions is as arbitrary and any other technology advancement based cut-off. One could argue the automatic transmission has saved as many lives as it has killed by letting diligent drives keeping both hands on the steering wheel and ensuring the vehicle is always in the right gear in a panic situations.

A new piece of technology is no better or worst than any other piece of technology, the technology is as good or as bad as the person using it.

 

[courtgreene]

Why not go back to transmissions without synchro-mesh gears so you have to double clutch and rev match during shifts (lets make drivers really focus on those shifts), or carburetors with manual chokes or ignition systems with manual timing advance adjustment? The junction between manual and automatic transmissions is as arbitrary and any other technology advancement based cut-off. One could argue the automatic transmission has saved as many lives as it has killed by letting diligent drives keeping both hands on the steering wheel and ensuring the vehicle is always in the right gear in a panic situations.

A new piece of technology is no better or worst than any other piece of technology, the technology is as good or as bad as the person using it.

I see your point, but I still stand with mine. Agree to disagree?

 

[theotherwaldo]

I would very much like to hear the story that further informs this claim. I’m not doubting it, I just want to know more.

My family was spending the summer along the Rogue River trail in Oregon.
I was packing some of our gear from the car to our campsite.
I stopped for a rest at a rocky point just before a shale slide area.
A fork-horn buck walked out into the river for a drink.
I grabbed a big chunk of shale and chucked it at the river behind the buck, just to scare it.
It turned and walked under the rock, which hit it on the spine just behind the head, dropping it right there.
Oops.
I couldn't see any way to get down to it, so I just continued to the camp site.
Dad chewed me out thoroughly.

Late that night we heard what sounded like a bear and a cougar arguing about something, down by the river... .

 

[courtgreene]

My family was spending the summer along the Rogue River trail in Oregon.
I was packing some of our gear from the car to our campsite.
I stopped for a rest at a rocky point just before a shale slide area.
A fork-horn buck walked out into the river for a drink.
I grabbed a big chunk of shale and chucked it at the river behind the buck, just to scare it.
It turned and walked under the rock, which hit it on the spine just behind the head, dropping it right there.
Oops.
I couldn't see any way to get down to it, so I just continued to the camp site.
Dad chewed me out thoroughly.

Late that night we heard what sounded like a bear and a cougar arguing about something, down by the river... .

when they say “make memories,” I don’t think that’s what’s envisioned… but certainly memorable.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I think the main difference between this new sight and previous models is that now we cal it AI instead of Tracking Point or some other name.

Extreme Distance Hunting

www.youtube.com

 

[FL-NC]

I don't care either way. It does make me wonder how much the thing costs, how well it actually works, and how easy it is to use. Considering most "hunting" doesn't involve terribly long ranges with what I would consider complex/difficult shots, my first instinct is save the $ and trouble of messing with this gadget and just develop good shooting habits through training.

 

[zdc1775]

I personally couldn't see myself using one but I believe that anyone should be able to if they want. I also could see this as being an invaluable tool used as an aid to get older or disabled sportsmen to be able to keep, or restart, hunting (look up Ryan Job and his successful trophy elk hunt after being blinded in Iraq).

 

[AK Hunter]

I think game hunting is getting way too easy. The technology these days is making lazy hunters to the point the hunters don't get any knowledge of their prey before shooting it. Getting some woodsmanship is a big part of the hunting sport. Using cell phone type game cameras, baiting, using drones, FLIR or night scopes, all take away from the woodsmanship of hunting.
The only way I would allow that type of electronic scope is if it kept the hunter from making a bad shot.
Hunting these days is getting just like driving, the cars these days are smarter than the people driving them.
Do you think it would be right if people hunted with robots & just had to sit in their trucks as the robot did the hunting. Where is all the technology going to stop??

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I think game hunting is getting way too easy.

I can see this, but I also see the perspective that the standard for what isn't too easy is whatever the person making the statement says, and strangely it is usually their exact kit, methods, etc. Nobody complaining about too much technology finds anything wrong with using firearms and optics. Folks are in the field with ballistic calculators, even, and the rationalization is that it is more humane or ethical. Ain't none of these guys, however, complaining about too much technology that are running around naked and catching game and killing it with their bare hands Homo habilis style and Louis Leakey suggested and demonstrated. It is along the same logic vine as suggesting people are hunting wrong, not true hunters, etc. because they do it differently. Nope, their level of technology are methods is all that is necessary. The standard stops with them. Additionally, there is little chance in hell that any of them want to give up the standard of technology they deem appropriate and do things Homo habilis style, because that would be too hard.

I took my first deer with a thrown rock.
Is that low tech enough for you?

Over bare hands, you have won the arms race with a monumental achievement of using projectile and ballistics technologies to kill.

Since the invention of the first tool by early humans, technology has improved. You don't have to use it of you don't want to, but it has been the common path of the human species.

Do you think it would be right if people hunted with robots & just had to sit in their trucks as the robot did the hunting. Where is all the technology going to stop??

Right? I don't think it would be wrong except that it is completely different than what a lot of people would like to call hunting and that really gets under people's skin.

I don't think it matters from a killing perspective. If you have 4 tags to fill and you fill your 4 tags, does it matter if you used a robot?

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Ultimately, it's probably not going to matter because as soon as the technology gets to the commercial level, it's likely that politicians are going to outlaw the bejeebers out of it because "scary". Take the case of teflon coated bullets, which are not armor piercing bullets at all, which were rapidly pronounced as such, and numerous laws (federal and state) were enacted which made manufacture, importation, sales, possession, and/or use illegal.


A big deal is being made out of this new technology as a "precision" shooting device, when it's likely NOT that at all. "The goal is to allow soldiers, certainly reservists who do not train regularly, to hit the target precisely at the first shot."

Hitting the target is decidedly NOT the same as a precision shot on the target itself. It's only a shot that hits anywhere on the target.

Hunters can better be compared to "snipers" than "infantry", however. Though I've certainly seen my share of people who fall more under "infantry".

When I shoot an animal, I'm not looking to "hit the animal". I'm looking to "kill the animal". Blowing the leg off a squirrel is a "hit", but it's not the kill shot a hunter goes for. Same for deer and other bigger game. More so, I submit, for bigger game because you most DEFINITELY want to score a hit in areas which result in either immediate or fairly quick kill. You don't want a gut shot in a deer, for example. That's not acceptable to a hunter for both humane reasons and the fact that a gut shot means potentially hours of tracking a wounded animal or the loss of the animal entirely.

This is "precision" ONLY within the scope of the general battlefield where the paradigm is "ordinance on target". Ordinance on target works for the battlefield quite well, but the same paradigm in the hunting field would literally be a bullet ridden, possibly wounded, possibly killed, possibly shredded animal.

This technology would probably be better suited for shotgun hunting, but not rifle hunting.


THAT SAID...could this technology be adapted to rifle hunting? I'm sure it could. The device would have to be programmed to recognize what specific areas of a given target, from any given angle of approach, would be an acceptable shot. If I were hunting squirrel, my preference is head shots. The device would have to recognize the head of a squirrel from any given target profile that a squirrel in a tree or shrubbery would present.

For deer hunting, the device would have to be programmed to recognize not only the appropriate areas of a dear which are acceptable, but also recognize where in that area the bullet should be placed for, say, a heart/lung shot from any angle of presentation the deer may have with respect to the hunter.

What about alligators or crocodiles? Well, that's the back of the head where the spine connects to the skull. It's a very tiny spot, about the size of a quarter. Can it be programmed to recognize this?

I submit hunters would get far more out of learning to actually shoot their rifles well than they would trying to get a device like this to turn them into a Hollywood gunslinger who shoots guns out of hands and rabbits on the fly. Hunting is, by definition, a controlled process of tracking/flushing and shooting of an animal. If you can't exhibit the control required for this, then walking a field with a gun in hand probably isn't for you.

And I certainly wouldn't recommend this for self-defense. I'm sure part of the process this device goes through involves tracking and predicting. I'm not interested in holding a firearm on someone long enough for the device to gather enough information to use predictive programming to decide when to allow the trigger I'm pressing to release and fire.

 

[zdc1775]

I think game hunting is getting way too easy. The technology these days is making lazy hunters to the point the hunters don't get any knowledge of their prey before shooting it. Getting some woodsmanship is a big part of the hunting sport. Using cell phone type game cameras, baiting, using drones, FLIR or night scopes, all take away from the woodsmanship of hunting.
The only way I would allow that type of electronic scope is if it kept the hunter from making a bad shot.
Hunting these days is getting just like driving, the cars these days are smarter than the people driving them.
Do you think it would be right if people hunted with robots & just had to sit in their trucks as the robot did the hunting. Where is all the technology going to stop??

I know that the robot comment is just a strawman argument, but would it really be wrong?

For instance, a lifelong hunter is now a paraplegic and someone designs this hypothetical robot for him to be able to "go" on one last elk hunt with his hunting buddies. They still have to put in the time and effort to find the elk (not to mention processing it), he just happens to be able to control the servos that aim and take the shot from his chair in the hunting lodge while watching it all play out on a monitor.

Now if they are just using the robot to kill the elk and let it rot, I would say that's wrong, but not something that allows someone who has a passion for hunting to continue that passion even after their body physically can't do it anymore.

I can see this, but I also see the perspective that the standard for what isn't too easy is whatever the person making the statement says, and strangely it is usually their exact kit, methods, etc. Nobody complaining about too much technology finds anything wrong with using firearms and optics. Folks are in the field with ballistic calculators, even, and the rationalization is that it is more humane or ethical. Ain't none of these guys, however, complaining about too much technology that are running around naked and catching game and killing it with their bare hands Homo habilis style and Louis Leakey suggested and demonstrated. It is along the same logic vine as suggesting people are hunting wrong, not true hunters, etc. because they do it differently. Nope, their level of technology are methods is all that is necessary. The standard stops with them. Additionally, there is little chance in hell that any of them want to give up the standard of technology they deem appropriate and do things Homo habilis style, because that would be too hard.

Exactly, my great grandfather would have never even thought about using a scope on any of his hunting rifles, and his father would have likely thought that smokeless powder was cheating, yet I don't even think twice about either and only use their methods to make hunting more challenging. We just happen to live in a time where technology is advancing at an extremely rapid pace and that allows people to use new items that were nothing more than a pipe dream a generation ago.

 

[.38 Special]

I think it is easy to get "sporting" mixed up with "ethical".

I personally ended up moving far in the opposite direction from such gadgets, and even away from firearms in general. So *I* have no use for modern firearms in hunting, let alone this sort of Buck Rogers nonsense. I consider it unsporting in the extreme.

But that's just me, and there's no way I could justify applying my own prejudices to any other - let alone every other - hunter in the field.

Ethics is a different matter, and the word really boils down to "Do I have a high likelihood of taking my chosen animal with a minimum of suffering, using my particular method?" That is certainly a code I feel justified in forcing onto every other hunter, and so I welcome anything which increases the likelihood of successful hits. (My only concern is with the muttonheads who would almost certainly take the thing as yet another excuse to play Chris Kyle in the hunting field. Add a line of code which prevents firing at more than 300 yards and I'll be completely on board.)

Short version: I wouldn't use one, but it's not my business if other people do - and I would strongly oppose regulations preventing it.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

A big deal is being made out of this new technology as a "precision" shooting device, when it's likely NOT that at all. "The goal is to allow soldiers, certainly reservists who do not train regularly, to hit the target precisely at the first shot."

Hitting the target is decidedly NOT the same as a precision shot on the target itself. It's only a shot that hits anywhere on the target.

Unfortunately, independent sources for this sighting system do not seem to be out there to verify or refute capabilities. I would not be so sure that these are not precision instrument. TrackingPoint worked fine as a hunting optic precision-wise, but the expense and reliability of function and available market just wasn't there. Never mind that they naively use firmware that was extremely susceptible to hacking. https://www.forbes.com/sites/frankm...aping-into-the-digital-world/?sh=44587952432e https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-can-disable-sniper-rifleor-change-target/

I see you quoted the article. The title also says it will turn them into sharpshooters, which means people who are very skilled in shooting.

The group doesn't look too bad. Their goal is accuracy to within a few mm. They aren't their yet, I don't think, but they are well within hitting the kill zone of a deer.

Israel's 'Smart Shooter' Revolutionizes World of Military

www.youtube.com

Like TrackingPoint, this product will fail without a military/leo market as this will likely be far too expensive for your traditional bubbas and weekend warrior hunters.