Should we ban killer robots of the future?

We've hardly made peace with the idea of driverless cars, and now we're being told that artificial intelligence (AI) could also control rifles, missiles and bombs of the future. The warning was issued last summer by leading figures such as Tesla chief Elon Musk, physicist Stephen Hawking and MIT professor Noam Chomsky. "Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control," it read. The letter had the merit of publicising a debate that has been agitating diplomats, the defence industry and NGOs for several years, but without any major impact until now. Given the recent progress of robotics and artificial intelligence, their use in the world of weapons is not a matter of "Terminator"-like science fiction anymore.