Will this year mark the first drone delivery, or the first time you encounter a robot at work or in your home? We saw significant advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence in 2015 (see "What Robots and AI Learned in 2015"). The world's largest economy has embarked on an audacious effort to fill its factories with advanced manufacturing robots. The government of China hopes this will help the country retain its vast manufacturing industry as workers' wages rise, and manufacturing becomes more efficient and technologically advanced around the world (see "China Wants to Replace Millions of Workers with Robots"). The project will require robots that are significantly more advanced and cost-efficient, and the economic and technological ripples could be felt around the world.

An open letter calling for a ban on lethal weapons controlled by artificially intelligent machines was signed last week by thousands of scientists and technologists, reflecting growing concern that swift progress in artificial intelligence could be harnessed to make killing machines more efficient, and less accountable, both on the battlefield and off. But experts are more divided on the issue of robot killing machines than you might expect. The letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was signed by many leading AI researchers as well as prominent scientists and entrepreneurs including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Steve Wozniak. "Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is--practically if not legally--feasible within years not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms." Rapid advances have indeed been made in artificial intelligence in recent years, especially within the field of machine learning, which involves teaching computers to recognize often complex or subtle patterns in large quantities of data.

The word "drone", a short term for an unmanned aerial vehicle, usually conjures up images of a menacing machine that spies and shoots from on high. However, over the past three years, a new generation of drones has emerged to address civilian and humanitarian needs, from surveying disaster zones to delivering aid. In the future, friendly drones could even whisk commuters above congested streets or haul cargo across Africa – if a desperate lack of legislation is addressed. Rapid progress in two key technological areas lies behind this new wave of friendly drones. On the one hand, essential parts including batteries and sensors have become smaller and cheaper, largely because of progress in commercial electronic devices.

In 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration will admit military, private, and commercial drones into U.S. airspace. The move could dramatically increase the number of unmanned aircraft shooting through the skies, and with it, the value of the domestic drone economy. The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimates that the new regulations will result in "100,000 jobs created and economic impact of $82 billion" by 2025. For several cities and states across the country, that means one thing: ka-ching. Take North Dakota, where law enforcement, local government, federal agencies, and universities have already laid the groundwork for the coming drone-volution.

Senators, law enforcement officials, and assorted experts attended a judiciary hearing yesterday to discuss the implications of drones in U.S. airspace. Right now drones aren't a part of everyday life for most Americans, but that's changing with 81 organizations--including government agencies, police departments, and universities-- cleared to fly robots in the U.S. and more expected down the line. In 2015, the Federal Aviation Authority plans to allow the first commercial use of drones in the United States. That might sound scary to people worried about a drone flying overhead and--legally--snapping pictures of them in their backyard sunning in their birthday suit. Thing is, that future has already arrived.

Two rhinos at the Kuzikus Nature Reserve in Namibia, photographed by drone. When the U.S. military needed to identify mines in a dangerous valley in Afghanistan, aerial-imagery specialist Tudor Thomas helped build a plane-based system to map it. Back in 2013, similar systems cost the military and its contractors one to five million dollars, Thomas says--and that didn't even include the cost of the plane. "It's hard to comprehend how much was getting spent just to make a simple aerial image," he says. The experience sparked an idea for a business: mapping by drone.

AMD's recent chips haven't rocked Intel's PC market dominance, but new chips based on the company's Zen architecture aim to change that next year. On Wednesday it shared initial details about the new FX and seventh-generation A-series chips, which are the brainchild of Jim Keller, a leading mobile chip designer at Apple until AMD hired him in 2012. The new AMD chips will battle Intel's highly anticipated Skylake line, which is designed to bring new wireless charging and data transfer features to laptops. Building on the launch of the fourth generation of its enterprise software suite earlier this year, SAP unveiled the cloud version of S/4Hana at its Sapphire conference on Wednesday. SAP expects most companies to opt for hybrid scenarios combining the on-premises version of the in-memory database platform with the new cloud version.

Time Line of UAVs From Civil War hot-air balloons to today's miniature flying robots, explore the history of unmanned aerial vehicles.

IF you find the use of remotely piloted warrior drones troubling, imagine that the decision to kill a suspected enemy is not made by an operator in a distant control room, but by the machine itself. Imagine that an aerial robot studies the landscape below, recognizes hostile activity, calculates that there is minimal risk of collateral damage, and then, with no human in the loop, pulls the trigger. Welcome to the future of warfare. While Americans are debating the president's power to order assassination by drone, powerful momentum -- scientific, military and commercial -- is propelling us toward the day when we cede the same lethal authority to software. Next month, several human rights and arms control organizations are meeting in London to introduce a campaign to ban killer robots before they leap from the drawing boards.

The real-life equivalent of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (which posits that robots may not harm humans, even if they are instructed to do so) is, like killer-robot technology itself, a ways off. In April, the United Nations released a report (PDF) that recommended suspending the development of autonomous weapons until their function and application is discussed more thoroughly. Last December, the Department of Defense issued a directive on weapon systems autonomy, calling for the establishment of "guidelines designed to minimize the probability and consequences of failures in autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems that could lead to unintended engagements." Though the Pentagon document stresses the need for human supervision of military robots, critics claim it leaves the door open for the development of autonomous lethal robots that aren't accountable to meaningful human oversight. "We already don't understand Microsoft Windows; we're certainly not going to understand something as complex as a humanlike intelligence," says Mark Gubrud, a research associate working on robotic and space weapons arms control at Princeton.