Grok Robots

Sharon Weinberger takes on this topic over at Wired’s Danger Room.

My point, which I’ll state here more clearly, is that rather than debating the real issue — what are the proper limits on the autonomous operations of weapons? — we are debating something a tad fantastical, an army of self-directing, lethal machines, deciding when they should kill or not. Terminators, in other words. I realize that debating Terminators is more fun, because it provides such sexy headlines as “Automated killer robots ‘threat to humanity,’” but I’m not sure it really addresses the main issue.