They’ll be back.
Experts have previously voiced their fears of malevolent Terminator -style artificial intelligence developing sufficient smarts to pose a risk to humans in the future, but the very real dangers of robotic warfare are already becoming a problem.
Despite the best efforts of a huge coalition of scientists and tech leaders calling for a ban on the development of autonomous weapons systems, the failure of the United Nations to effectively regulate the ‘killer robot’ industry is already enabling the makers of dangerous technology, according to a report in The Guardian.
“There is indeed a danger now that [the process] may get stuck,” said Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, as reported by Harriet Grant. “A lot of money is going into development and people will want a return on their investment. If there is not a pre-emptive ban on the high-level autonomous weapons then once the genie is out of the bottle it will be extremely difficult to get it back in.”