What exactly is it that we find so unnerving about the proliferation of autonomous weapons systems? Reporting on the 2017 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, The Engineer quotes one robotics developer's fears that "unlike other potential manifestations of Al [that] remain the realm of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems... have a real potential to cause significant harm to innocent people". True: but so do the weapons already in mankind's bristling arsenal. We cannot claim control even of these: the minefields of Afghanistan, Angola, Croatia and Cambodia hold plenty of extremely dumb weapons granted autonomy enough by their haphazard scattering.
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