Kerby Anderson

If you mention the term “killer robots,” people are likely to think of the Terminator movies. But these are real and will change the nature of warfare.

Mustafa Suleyman devotes a section to “robots with guns” in his book, The Coming Wave. He tells the story of an attack on a heavily guarded Iranian convoy that came from a nearby empty pickup truck outfitted with a gun. It was fired by a “high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera-eyes, operated via satellite.” Although a human authorized the strike, it was the AI that fired the weapon and automatically adjusted the gun’s aim.

In the future, imagine robots equipped with facial recognition and automatic weapons. That may seem like science fiction, but military drones firing missiles at the enemy is fact. Soon they will become autonomous drones that don’t even need human interaction.

Paul Wood proclaims that “The Killer Robots Are Coming.” He is concerned that the “dangerous marriage between AI and robotics is already happening, creating autonomous killing machines that can work with little or no human oversight.”

He describes a Ukrainian drone company that claimed it had deployed a fully autonomous weapon that used AI to decide on its own when to shoot and whom to kill. In South Korea, guard robots on its border have the capability to detect, track and fire on intruders without humans giving commands.

Of even greater concern is the possibility that a nuclear weapon could be deployed by artificial intelligence. He suspects that Russia and China may already have automation where early-warning systems trigger a reflex to launch missiles in return.

Killer robots are no longer merely the stuff of science fiction.