the slippery slope: armed, autonomous robots

University of Sheffield Professor Noel Sharkey was recently among those presenting at a conference called The Ethics of Autonomous Military Systems, organized by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

While the warnings raised by Professor Sharkey earned him a lampooning in Engadget, in my opinion he's the one talking sense and those making fun of him are fools.

His speech at the RUSI conference appears not to be publicly available, but he addressed the same concerns in a commentary published last August in The Guardian.

I am a fan of robotics in general, but autonomous machinery is a very powerful technology, and like all powerful technologies it needs to be handled with care.