Like every other weapon of mass destruction before it, like chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, we will need to ban such weaponry. Previously, if you wanted to do harm, you had to have an army of soldiers to wage war. These will be weapons of mass destruction. Each was a step change in the speed and efficiency with which we could kill our opponents. The second was the invention of nuclear weapons. The first revolution in warfare was the invention of gun powder. There are, however, many reasons why this will be a terrible development in warfare. It will have superhuman accuracy and reflexes. Have the drone fly, track, and target for itself, and you have the perfect weapon from a technological perspective. Drones have been sabotaged by jamming their radio link. The weakest link in a drone is the radio link back to base. The attractiveness of such technologies is obvious. Take an existing Predator drone and replace the human pilot with a computer-this is technically possible today. It is much simpler technologies that are, at best, a decade or so away. But it is not The Terminator that worries me or thousands of my colleagues working in AI. The media like to call them “killer robots.” The problem with calling them “killer robots” is that this conjures up a picture of The Terminator. The world will be a much worse place if, in 20 years’ time, the military are using lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), for there are no laws about LAWS.

Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Gary Granger Jr./U.S. Navy technician operating a remote ordnance neutralization system, a bomb-neutralizing robot, in 2011.

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War robot in real life