Artificial intelligence (AI) will transform our lives. It will touch almost every aspect of society: business, education, transportation, medicine, even politics. In most places, this will be a good thing, removing drudgery and improving productivity. But there is one place that I fear its arrival, and that is in the military. 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. 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. But it is not The Terminator that worries me or thousands of my colleagues working in AI. It is much simpler technologies that are, at best, a decade or so away. Take an existing Predator drone and replace the human pilot with a computer—this is technically possible today. The attractiveness of such technologies is obvious. The weakest link in a drone is the radio link back to base. Drones have been sabotaged by jamming their radio link. Have the drone fly, track, and target for itself, and you have the perfect weapon from a technological perspective. It will never sleep. It will fight 24/7. It will have superhuman accuracy and reflexes.

Full opinion : Military robots powered by artificial intelligence are the future of warfare.