By Selwyn Duke

There has been much talk lately about robots taking jobs, but the even scarier prospect is robots taking lives. This is inevitable, too, says president of Microsoft, Brad Smith. In fact, he warned in a recent Telegraph interview that governments need to consider the ethical questions raised by the development of battlefield robots.

The term “killer robots” may conjure up images of the virtually indestructible automaton assassin in the film Terminator, and that is roughly what’s at issue. No, these robots wouldn’t be covered with imitation human flesh or travel through time, but they would be lethal autonomous weapons systems that would choose targets in accordance with their programming. And, as with nuclear bombs, machine guns, and aircraft, they would be, as Brookings Institution warfare futurist Peter W. Singer put it, a battlefield “game changer.”

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