This is scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Think killer robots. What comes to mind? Maybe this guy?

I'll be back. We are not talking about Terminator.

We're talking about much simpler technologies that are at best a few years away.

In fact, many of which you can see under development today in every theater of the war.

Toby Walsh, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in

Sydney.

He spoke February 14th as part of a discussion called Killer Robots, Technological, Legal, and

Ethical Challenges at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

And so these are systems that are using sensors and software processing on their own to determine what constitutes a target and then applying lethal force to that without supervision or meaningful human control.

Another speaker, Peter Assaro, co-founder of the International Committee for

Robot Arms Control, has participated in UN talks on autonomous weapons.

So what we've really been lobbying

is not a sort of complete ban on some specific technical capability,

but a more general requirement

that all weapons systems should have meaningful human control over the targeting and engagement of those weapons systems.

We're also quite fearful that these could constitute a new kind of weapon of mass destruction to the

extent that a small group of people or individuals could launch large numbers of autonomous weapons

systems that could have devastating effects on populations.

Mary Wareham, coordinator of the campaign to stop killer robots at Human Rights Watch, cited

the results of a new international poll on killer robots.

The public is becoming more opposed to the prospect of a weapon system that would remove human control.

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