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Article in question.

For those of you who have ever watched The Terminator movie series, this article may send chills through your spine. When I watched the first of that series, my first thought was that it could never happen (boy, how many times do we fall for that convoluted line of thought). Automated killer robots…now that is a unique idea. My father taught me years ago that movies and novels will sometimes be the tool to “break the ice” on new technology or ideologies. How right he was.

Another movie that came to mind when I read this article was a more recent one called Stealth where the military developed a highly advanced jet that could think and fight on its own. The commander justifies the new technology as a way of “not sending home body bags to mothers when they could have used this new weapon with no loss of life to their sons”. The leader of the flight crew raises one major concern when he responds, “these machines have no moral reasoning”. These machines don’t know how to make a judgment call.

How will these killer robots discern between the good guys and the enemy? What happens when our enemies obtain this technology and reverse engineer them against us? If both sides in a major battle are led by autonomous killer robots, who will be the collateral damage? Us?

Be afraid…Be very afraid.