Banning Killer Robots

SOMETIMES YOU WISH THAT science would simply give us the technology we want, then leave well enough alone so we could play with our fancy new gadgets without having to worry. No dire warnings about its possible misuse, no intellectual analyses concerning possible downsides and unintended consquences. Then we could live in a fantasy world where all high tech is good, and fun. But, unfortunately, that aint the way it is, at least, not yet.Let's face it. We have abused every invention. We are currently abusing smart phones and computers, using them to spy on each other and blackmail each other, increasingly. Cars and cell phones would be so much more fun, if we didn't have to feel guilty about using them. Cars are destroying the environment, cell phones are making mush of our minds. All that may be true, but don't mean we want to hear it. The latest alarm going off in the world of technology concerns robots. Robotic science is advancing at a geometric rate; every year a quantum leap occurs in our ability to program intelligence into computers, and physical dexterity into robots. The Japanese are coming out with butler type robots which can replace human domestic help. Any computer worth its salt can beat a chess grand master. All the potential military applications of computers and robots have not even been thought of yet, and already, robotic scientists are warning us that it is now time to start developing international treaties regulating the use of robots, and banning them as weapons, the same way we now ban chemical and biological warfare.The reason, we are being told, is that soon, very soon, robot technology will be sufficiently advanced to make possible killer robots, kinds of machines which would be deadly in battle, against other machines, against combat soldiers, against whole populations of people. If the people who are desigining and building these things are telling us all this, which they indeed are, we would perhaps be well advised to listen.