Welcomes To Our New Robotic Overlords

Big dog military robots (Wikimedia)

From War Is Boring:

“Pentagon planners are having to figure out not only how to use machines such as the PackBot [pictured — ed.] in the wars of today, but also how they should plan for battlefields in the near future that will be, as one officer put it, ‘largely robotic.’”

That’s Wired for War author PW Singer, writing in a past issue of The Wilson Quarterly, on the rise of war bots, spurred by the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As our weapons are designed to have ever more autonomy, deeper questions arise. Can the new armaments reliably separate friend from foe? What laws and ethical codes apply? What are we saying when we send out unmanned ma­chines to fight for us? What is the “message” that those on the other side receive? Ultimately, how will humans remain masters of weapons that are immeasurably faster and more “intelligent” than they are?

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My Comment: And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg.