Comment by mrandish

My strong initial reaction to even the idea of "fully autonomous AI killbots" made me miss a subtle distinction about what the real danger is. We already have a variety of non-AI killbots. Conceptually, any area denial weapon like a proximity triggered Claymore mine is a non-AI "killbot". And just tying one or more sensors to trigger a gun or explosive already works today without AI. . So what's gained by adding full AI?

Such non-AI automatic triggering and targeting can already be constrained by location, range, time frame, remote-control, etc using fairly sophisticated non-AI heuristics. If non-AI devices can already <always pull trigger if X, Y and Z conditions = TRUE>, this is really about not pulling the trigger based on more complex judgements. That really only enables leaving such systems armed and active in far larger, less constrained contexts where 'friend or foe' judgements exceed basic true/false sensor conditions. That the military feels such urgent need for that capability is much more worrying to me.