Christian Caryl explains the revolutionary impact of unmanned weapons of war:
The ethical and legal implications of the new technology already go far beyond the relatively circumscribed issue of targeted killing. Military robots are on their way to developing considerable autonomy. As noted earlier, UAVs can already take off, land, and fly themselves without human intervention. Targeting is still the exclusive preserve of the human operator—but how long will this remain the case?
As sensors become more powerful and diverse, the amount of data gathered by the machines is increasing exponentially, and soon the volume and velocity of information will far exceed the controller’s capacity to process it all in real time, meaning that more and more decision-making will be left to the robot. A move is already underway toward systems that allow a single operator to handle multiple drones simultaneously, and this, too, will tend to push the technology toward greater autonomy. We are not far from the day when it will become manifest that our mechanical warriors are better at protecting the lives of our troops than any human soldier, and once that happens the pressure to let robots take the shot will be very hard to resist.
Roland Paris worries about global drone proliferation. David Axe zooms in on their growing role in Asia.
The Dish 