Major military powers, including the US, are doing very little to stop cheap, lightweight killer robots, which are just around the corner.
Max Tegmark, a researcher at MIT, warned in an interview with TheNextWeb that the kind of "slaughterbots" that militaries are already working on may soon be in the hands of civilians.
He told the site that they would be small, cheap and light like phones. It is not in the national security interests of these countries to allow super-powerful weapons of mass destruction.
The context is even more chilling. Ahead of a United Nations debate and resolution vote this week, the US, Russia, and China have all signaled that they are against a global ban onLAWs.
An unnamed diplomat told the news agency that there is not enough support to launch a treaty at this stage, though they are hopeful for some sort of "principles" countries will agree to on a nation-by-nation basis.
While such stopgaps may work for Geneva, researchers and activists like Tegmark and Conboy of the Stop Killer Robots coalition think it's far from enough, and Conboy told reporters that the pace of technology is really beginning to outpace the rate of diplomatic talks.
The Future of Life Institute at MIT recently released a film about the dangers of this terrifying technology, and the doomsday-esque near future the institute imagines is as horrible as you would expect.
The co- founder of FLI said that the slaughterbots would be used by the cartels.
If you can buy slaughterbots for the same price as an AK-47, it will be much easier for drug traffickers to kill people.
Even if a judge has a lot of bodyguards, you can fly in through a bedroom window and kill them. It is going to go far beyond that. Soon anyone who wants to knock off anyone for any reason will be able to do this.
This technology has already been used on the battlefield.
NPR reported earlier this year that killer drones that do not have human operators were used in a skirmish between warring Libyan military groups in March 2020, though researchers noted that it doesn't appear as if anyone was killed by the drones.
The US is going through the motions of asking Congress for permission to build their own weapons, though it seems like it will be a while before they get their wish. It is especially telling that the American UN delegation is going to vote against a treaty against LAWs.
It is frightening to think of a future in which any civilian can buy and program a drone to kill someone else, but we must not forget that the US already has killed scores of people in the hands of the military.
With the automation craze sweeping every industry from agriculture to weapons manufacturing, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to take the human element out of drone-striking. The logical conclusion is that SlaughterBots should be made available to the public.
We need a ban on SlaughterBots because they are a step away from your neighborhood.
The Rise of Killer Robots was discussed by a former General Warns.
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