The Next U.S. President Is Going To Decide The Role That AI And Robots Will Have In Future Wars

Clear-skies thinking: the prototype Tanaris stealth drone is being designed by BAE Systems and expected to be in use from 2030 © BAE

Financial Times: AI and robots line up for battlefield service

The future of the US arsenal lies in next president’s hands.

Artificial intelligences have a long history when it comes to visions of future conflict: from the medieval Golem of Jewish tradition to the robotic Martian handling machines of H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds and beyond. Even our darkest cold war visions had technology at their heart: the world ends in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove because a machine wills it.

The past few years, however, have seen a flowering of revolutionary technologies that make many of these fantasies a near-achievable reality: robotics and AI are now at the forefront of the military technologists’ art.

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WNU Editor: The genie is already out of the bottle on this one. And while the U.S. Defense Secretary has stated that humans will always decide on when to pull the trigger .... U.S. Defense Secretary: The Pentagon Will Never Use Robotic Systems That Decide On Their Own When To Kill (October 30, 2016) .... |I can easily see how developments in technology can change all of this in the future .... specifically giving these weapon systems the legal guidelines on the "when and how" to use these weapons .... i.e. .... before launching such a strike and/or responding to an attack should the opportunity arise and if humans are not available at that moment in time.