Killer robots are here. What should we do with them?
The United Nations' Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is meeting in Geneva this week to discuss the future of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) — technology more colloquially known as killer robots. Specifically under consideration are robots that can make their own decisions about who to kill independent of human direction.
Though hardly as advanced as the robots of science fiction, LAWs already exist. In fact, they're employed by South Korea in the demilitarized zone bordering North Korea. There, a robot made by Samsung can independently identify and shoot human targets as far as 2.5 miles away.
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