Author P.W. Singer warns about the need to think about the implications of using more and more warbots in his new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. Here is his thesis stated at the conclusion of his interview with CNet:
You may be getting new technological capabilities, but you are also creating new human dilemmas. And it's those dilemmas that are really the revolutionary aspect of this. What are the laws that surround this and how do you insure accountability in this setting? At what point do we have to become concerned about our weapons becoming a threat to ourselves? This future of war is again a mix of more and more machines being used to fight, but the wars themselves are still about our human realities. They're still driven by our human failings, and the ripple effects are still because of our human politics, our human laws. And it's the cross between the two that we have to understand.
It's a timely warning, as the military is only now starting to build and test autonomous weapons systems, this is the time to have this kind of discussion.
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