I’ve talked previously about the early steps machines are making towards autonomy, and combine this with weaponry and you’ve got yourself the plot of a couple of dozen Hollywood movies.  Isaac Asimov’s 3 rules for robots may be needed sooner than we thought! (In case you hadn’t seen them before, they are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.)

Now that’s all very well for I, Robot, but autonomy in robots will inevitably be reached well before they’re intelligent enough to use that autonomy, or are capable of sticking to rules.  Relatively simple AI will be used in machines that potentially have access to damaging/lethal technology.

Think that’s impossible?  The headline above is real, and to quote the article “the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim’s head. The man succeeded in defending himself but not before suffering serious injuries.”

Prof. Sharkey is calling for debate on autonomous military robots, and it’s timely – but probably won’t happen until one of these military robots does something “wrong”, such as a friendly fire incident.  Be that as it may, A.I. (or at least highly trained autonomous machines) is of course being developed on in a lot of diverse areas.  And given military budgets, it’s quite possible some of the first properly autonomous and intelligent machines will carry a weapon…