Droning On Towards A Date With Destiny?

Have you been watching the skies? I have. As the US expands its unmanned air force, researchers are testing and demonstrating autonomous drones -- ones that could "hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans." (According to the author of the wonderfully-titled Army-funded study Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, “Lethal autonomy is inevitable.”) Philosophers are penning learned monographs on the ethics of drone warfare. Universities are beginning to offer degrees in unmanned autonomous vehicle design. The US Air Force is even developing an unmanned "counter tunnel robotics." system. Yes, that's right, the Air Force. Which gives us this immortal quote in the linked article: "...there is perhaps also an indication here that a conceptual revolution is underway within the Air Force, where the earth itself—geological space—is seen as merely a thicker version of the sky." Truly, we are entering the Age of Drones. Unfortunately, the governments, militaries, and philosophers leading us there appear to be suffering from a catastrophic failure of imagination. Only nation-states wield drones as weapons right now: therefore, they seem to reason, only nation-states will ever have weaponized drones, forever and ever amen.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7njiVSqHatY/

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