A squad of soldiers is under attack and pinned down by rockets in the close quarters of urban combat. One of them makes a call over his radio, and within moments a fleet of small autonomous drones equipped with explosives fly through the town square, entering buildings and scanning for enemies before detonating on command. One by one the suicide drones seek out and kill their targets. A voiceover on the video, a fictional ad for multibillion-dollar Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems, touts the AI-enabled drones' ability to "maximize lethality and combat tempo". While defense companies like Elbit promote their new advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) with sleek dramatizations, the technology they are developing is increasingly entering the real world.

Former Pentagon policy analyst Paul Scharre has recalled the story in his upcoming book Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In the book, which will be released on February 28, Scharre recounts how the U.S. Army was testing AI monitoring systems and decided to use the Marines to help build the algorithms that the security cameras would use. They then attempted to put the AI system to the test and see if the squad of Marines could find new ways to avoid detection and evade the cameras. To train the AI, the security cameras, which were developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Squad X program, required data in the form of a squad of Marines spending six days walking around in front of them. After six days spent training the algorithm, the Marines decided to put the AI security cameras to the test.

In the upcoming book "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" by Paul Scharre -- an excerpt of which was posted on Twitter by The Economist defense editor Shashank Joshi -- the author relays an anecdote about a time when the U.S. military used soldiers to refine an AI system's ability to detect people. After six days of training the algorithm by having soldiers walk around, writes Scharre, the engineers on the project flipped the script, pitting the soldiers against the AI by placing the robot in the middle of a traffic circle and tasking the soldiers with approaching it undetected.

Law enforcement has used robots to investigate suspicious packages. Now, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a policy proposal that would allow SFPD's robots to use deadly force against a suspect. Law enforcement has used robots to investigate suspicious packages. Now, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a policy proposal that would allow SFPD's robots to use deadly force against a suspect. Should robots working alongside law enforcement be used to deploy deadly force?

Paul Scharre is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He is the award-winning author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, which won the 2019 Colby Award and was named one of Bill Gates' top five books of 2018. Aswin Pranam: To start, what classifies as an autonomous weapon? Paul Scharre: An autonomous weapon, quite simply, makes its own decisions of whom to engage in the battlefield. The core challenge is in figuring out which of those decisions matter.

Computers have gotten pretty good at making certain decisions for themselves. Automatic spam filters block most unwanted email. But can a machine ever be trusted to decide whether to kill a human being? It's a question taken up by the eighth episode of the Sleepwalkers podcast, which examines the AI revolution. Recent, rapid growth in the power of AI technology is causing some military experts to worry about a new generation of lethal weapons capable of independent and often opaque actions.

Hoping to prepare for what many see as a coming revolution in artificial intelligence-enabled weaponry ― and convince a skeptical public that it can apply such innovations responsibly ― the U.S. military is taking early steps to define the ethical boundaries for how it will use such systems. On Thursday, a Pentagon advisory organization called the Defense Innovation Board published a set of ethical principles for how military agencies should design AI-enabled weapons and apply them on the battlefield. The board's recommendations are in no way legally binding. It now falls to the Pentagon to determine how and whether to proceed with them. Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Defense Department's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said he hopes the recommendations will set the standard for the responsible and ethical use of such tools.

Even as the United Nations continues a long-running debate on how to regulate lethal autonomous weapons, a top US Army official is doubling down on his vision for incredibly autonomous systems that can categorize threats, select targets, and fire artillery without any human involvement. After that sort of system has been developed, the Army's acquisitions chief Bruce Jette said, an interface can be added for any "safety concerns." Jette, a former tank operator with a doctorate from MIT, made the comments at an event at the recently-concluded 2019 Association for the United States Army conference. There, Jette talked about building a tank turret hooked to an artificial intelligence system that, he said, could distinguish between a Volkswagen and an infantry fighting vehicle and then "shoot it." Defense News reported on Jette's call for fully autonomous weapons.

Military pilots may soon have a new kind of wingman to depend upon: not flesh-and-blood pilots but fast-flying, sensor-studded aerial drones that fly into combat to scout enemy targets and draw enemy fire that otherwise would be directed at human-piloted aircraft. War planners see these robotic wingmen as a way to amplify air power while sparing pilots' lives and preventing the loss of sophisticated fighter jets, which can cost more than $100 million apiece. "These drone aircraft are a way to get at that in a more cost-effective manner, which I think is really a game-changer for the Air Force," says Paul Scharre, director of the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Unlike slow-moving drones such as the Reaper and the Global Hawk, which are flown remotely by pilots on the ground, the new combat drones would be able to operate with minimal input from human pilots. To do that, they'd be equipped with artificial intelligence systems that give them the ability not only to fly but also to learn from and respond to the needs of the pilots they fly alongside. "The term we use in the Air Force is quarterbacking," says Will Roper, assistant secretary of the U.S. Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and one of the experts working to develop the AI wingmen.

The swarm robots are coming and they could change the way wars are fought. In February, the defence secretary said "swarm squadrons" will be deployed by the British armed forces in the coming years. The US has also been testing interconnected, co-operative drones that are capable of working together to overwhelm adversaries. Low-cost, intelligent and inspired by swarms of insects, these new machines could revolutionise future conflicts. From swarming enemy sensors with a deluge of targets, to spreading out over large areas for search-and-rescue missions, they could have a range of uses on and off the battlefield.