Pentagon hires British scientist to help build robot soldiers that 'won't commit war crimes'

The American military is planning to build robot soldiers that will not be able to commit war crimes like their human comrades in arms.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3536943/Pentagon-hires-British-scientist-to-help-build-robot-soldiers-that-wont-commit-war-crimes.html

Ran Prieur had some interesting thoughts about this in his January 24, 2005 post:

January 24. "Some thoughts on these new robot soldiers. For the moment, they're just remote extentions of human operators. Now, if the human operator sees another human attacking the robot, will he fire on that human? Of course!

Do you see the problem? A human is being killed for attacking a machine. When cops kill people, they always use the excuse that they fear their lives, human lives, are in danger. Now they're trying to slip this one by us, and get us to accept that a machine can kill in "self"-defense, or that a human can be murdered on the spot for attacking a lifeless object. It's as if you take a baseball bat to a port-a-john, and a gun sticks out and shoots you dead, and it's legal. Eventually, the family of a human killed by a robot will take it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court will have to say, yes, a machine has a right to kill a human, because if they say no, the system will collapse."