Ethics of Autonomous Military Robots

Ronald C. Arkin, “Governing Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture,” Technical Report GIT-GVU-07011. Fascinating (and long: 117-page) paper on ethical implications of robots in war.
[From Bruce Schneier's blog]
Readers may also be interested in a more recent publication from Georgia Tech, “Lethality and Autonomous Systems: Survey Design and Results” (PDF format), a [...]

The fly’s a spy

The Economist
JUST below a half-opened garage door a tiny device can be seen at the feet of someone lurking in the shadows. It looks like a blue dragonfly. Then its miniature wings begin to flap as it slips under the door and darts along the street. After rising through the air it stops to hover [...]

A challenge, eh?

The Economist
The competition to make a working robot vehicle has moved from the desert to the mean city streets
ONLY three years ago the world’s most advanced robotic cars struggled to make their way around even basic obstacles such as large rocks and potholes in the road. Despite millions of dollars’ worth of high-tech equipment, the [...]

Rise of the machines

The Economist
EVER since Karol Capek, a Czech playwright, used the term in the early 1920s to describe artificial people, robots have usually appeared in popular culture with human characteristics and made by big companies. There was the Model B-9 Environmental Control Robot in “Lost in Space”; Rosie, the robot maid in “The Jetsons”; C-3PO in [...]