Warfare's third revolution

Autonomous weapons can change the nature of human conflict

A seven-minute documentary, titled “Slaughterbots” caused consternation at the last United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. It was made by the Future of Life Institute, an advocacy NGO. Slaughterbots is a part of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (CSKR), a movement backed by Human Rights Watch and funded by Elon Musk, among others. The movie shows how small drones, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), could use facial recognition and Internet protocol tracing to track down people by identifying their faces or locating their mobile phones or vehicles. These drones could then kill their targets using tiny explosive charges