China is developing a new range of killer cruise missiles fitted with technology which will effectively turn them into killer robots. Dubbed "death drones", the missiles will use artificial intelligence (AI) to guide themselves in flight and potentially even choose new targets. Wang Changqing, director of the General Design Department of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, told China Daily that his country was leading the world in the development of AI weapons.

China is developing a new range of killer cruise missiles fitted with technology which will effectively turn them into killer robots. Dubbed "death drones", the missiles will use artificial intelligence (AI) to guide themselves in flight and potentially even choose new targets. Wang Changqing, director of the General Design Department of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, told China Daily that his country was leading the world in the development of AI weapons. He said: "We plan to adopt a'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements. "Moreover, our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation.

Some readers were skeptical of the idea that A.I.'s interests could ever correspond with our own, despite the work of researchers such as Stuart Russell who are trying to ensure that computers can learn to recognize what's most important to humans. As one who took such a position put it, "A.I. will likely just be a very, very smart machine and the concept of'interests' might not bear." Instead, "We should worry more about whether the interests of private and military A.I. R&D teams align with our public interests," a reader suggested. Another wrote that "terrorist groups and … enemy nation states" presented the greater risk. And others continued to hold that the real trouble is that there's no such thing as human interest per se, as did one who wrote, "We humans can't even agree on what constitutes'good' and what constitutes'evil.' "