Nicholas Carr picks up Christof Heyns’ report on Lethal Autonomous Robots (LAR) to the UN Human Rights Council.
LAR’s are “weapon systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further human intervention,” have not yet been deployed in wars or other conflicts, but the technology to produce them is very much in reach. It’s just a matter of taking the human decision-maker out of the hurly-burly of the immediate “kill loop” and leaving the firing decision to algorithms.
The question is will people take notice before this technology takes off big time.