Megan Garber — Defense One

Should the U.S. establish a new federal agency to regulate robots?

Here’s one potential problem with that proposal—one that has very little to do with the law, and very much to do with technology: “The government has virtually no experts on the inside that understand autonomous robotic systems.”

That’s according to Missy Cummings, a professor of engineering at Duke, an expert on drones and other robots, and a former fighter pilot. Cummings came to that conclusion—one that means, she says, that “the United States government is in serious trouble”—while advising the government in, among other things, its development of a $100 million robotic helicopter program.

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