A project team of Komeito, the junior partner in the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition, has presented to Foreign Minister Taro Kono its proposals for an international agreement to regulate robotic weapons development. Deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems, or LAWS, cannot be overlooked in terms of international humanitarian law and ethics, according to the proposals released Monday. Komeito called for agreeing on a document, such as a political declaration or a code of conduct, within the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Kono said he will refer to the proposals. Ethical issues and military advantages of such weapons have been under discussion within the framework of the convention since 2014.

Daniel Suarez has quickly established himself as the heir apparent to Michael Crichton with a string of fast-paced thrillers full of cutting-edge science. His new novel Change Agent is about a world transformed by ubiquitous genetic engineering and based on real-life research that's advancing at an astonishing rate. In Suarez's book, editing the genomes of human embryos is common, but strict limits are placed on edits that are considered too risky. That puts Interpol agents at odds with parents who want every genetic advantage for their children--as well as with the black market baby labs that cater to them. One of Change Agent's crazier plot points involves a criminal who attacks an Interpol agent and injects him with a substance that rewrites his DNA, transforming his body into that of a wanted criminal.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. A video created by advocates of a ban on autonomous weapons would have you believe this dystopian future is right around the corner if we don't act now. The short video, called "Slaughterbots," was released last month coinciding with United Nations meetings on autonomous weapons. The UN meetings ended inconclusively, but the video is getting traction. It's gotten over 2 million views and has sparked dozens of news stories.

Killer robots should be urgently banned before a wave of weapons of mass destruction gets out of control, industry leaders say. Robotics and artificial intelligence experts have signed of an open letter demanding the UN prohibit the use of such weapons internationally. Among the 116 signatories are Tesla founder Elon Musk and Mustafa Suleyman, head of applied AI at Google's Deep Mind. The weapons, including lethal microdrone swarms, are on the edge of development with the potential to create global instability, they warn. Killer robots should be urgently banned before a wave of weapons of mass destruction gets out of control, industry leaders say.

The Pentagon has awarded an $11 million contract to build a'combined-arms squad' of human and robotic capabilities. Under the new agreement, Six3 Advanced Systems will'design, develop, and validate' prototypes of the new system, which is expected to be completed by mid-2019. It comes as experts have increasingly warned that robotic weapons will soon play a much larger role in warfare than they already do, and could even overtake human presence on the battlefield in the next decade. The Pentagon has awarded an $11 million contract to build a'combined-arms squad' of human and robotic capabilities. Under the new agreement, Six3 Advanced Systems will'design, develop, and validate' prototypes of the new system.

Are you willing to inject an electronic neural net into your brain, in order to compete with super-intelligent robots? That's the message from'super villain in training' Elon Musk, who is literally developing what he hopes is the next phase in human evolution. Two years ago Tesla CEO Musk and Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking were among the signatories to a dramatic open letter to the public at large. They warned of the dangers they saw in the uncontrolled development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The always outspoken Musk went so far as to call Artificial Intelligence development "… summoning the demon."

The face of homebrew, remote-controlled military robotics in Iraq is a man named Ali Hashem al-Daraji, better known by the nickname Abu Ali. In 2014 he was a policeman for Iraq's interior ministry, but in June of that year, when the Iraqi Security Forces collapsed as ISIS took over Mosul, Abu Ali hooked up with the Hashd al Shaabi, or "Popular Mobilization Units," an umbrella organization of anti-ISIS militias, some of which had also fought against US forces during the Iraq War. Before eventually returning to the Iraqi Federal Police last November, Abu Ali fought with a couple of militia organizations across Iraq, was injured by an improvised explosive device in Fallujah, and took a selfie with Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's covert-action Qods Force, in charge of Tehran's wars in Iraq and Syria and a sworn enemy of the US. "My purpose was to help the Hashd with minimal casualties," he says. Abu Ali produces little wheeled robots designed to allow troops to fire from behind cover.

The next president will have a range of issues on their plate, from how to deal with growing tensions with China and Russia, to an ongoing war against ISIS. But perhaps the most important decision they will make for overall human history is what to do about autonomous weapons systems (AWS), aka "killer robots." The new president will literally have no choice. It is not just that the technology is rapidly advancing, but because of a ticking time bomb buried in US policy on the issue. In 2012, the Obama administration created Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, which sets policy on how the Pentagon handles the questions of this new technology.

In the not-so-distant future, we will begin entrusting to robotic systems such vital tasks as driving a car, performing surgery, and choosing when to apply lethal force in a war zone. As we describe in this report, ever more autonomous machines will present challenges spanning technical, regulatory, and even philosophical realms. They will force us to confront deep moral quandaries, and might even tweak our sense of who we are. If robots are going to drive our cars and play with our kids, we'll need to teach them right from wrong Here's how six of the coolest surgical robots are transforming the operating room Six month's worth of beta-testing is showing what works and what needs tweaking

Czech writer Karel?apek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which famously introduced the word robot to the world, begins with synthetic humans--the robots from the title--toiling in factories to produce low-cost goods. It ends with those same robots killing off the human race. Thus was born an enduring plot line in science fiction: robots spiraling out of control and turning into unstoppable killing machines. Twentieth-century literature and film would go on to bring us many more examples of robots wreaking havoc on the world, with Hollywood notably turning the theme into blockbuster franchises like The Matrix, Transformers, and The Terminator. Lately, fears of fiction turning to fact have been stoked by a confluence of developments, including important advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, along with the widespread use of combat drones and ground robots in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world's most powerful militaries are now developing ever more intelligent weapons, with varying degrees of autonomy and lethality.