Would it be Wise to Create an 'Intelligent Gun'?

Learning machines are capable of working ever more autonomously on ever more complex tasks. In this article, I explore whether it would it be smart for humankind to develop an'intelligent gun'. There are an estimated 875 million civilian, law-enforcement, and military firearms in the world, of which 650 million are in the hands of civilians, either legally or illegally[1]. Given the plethora of high-profile gun attacks in recent months and years – particularly in the US but also in France, Norway, Pakistan and Tunisia to name but a few – it is disturbingly easy to imagine gunmen on the loose in a school or at a public event, shooting indiscriminately and leaving casualties in their wake. Imagine how different things could be if a gun had artificial intelligence built in to it, turning it into an intelligent gun.