Swarms of killer AI drones might sound like the plot of a dystopian science-fiction thriller. But in a terrifying glimpse of the future, one scientist has shown just how easy it already is to build an'assassination drone' that can hunt down and kill people. In just a few hours, Luis Wenus, an engineer and entrepreneur, converted a 115 ( 89.99) drone into the basis of a deadly weapon. Using AI facial recognition the drone was programmed to recognise individuals and race towards them at full speed. Although Mr Wenus says he built the drone'for a game' he also says he wanted to raise awareness for how easily this could be used for a deadly terrorist attack.

On Dec 13-17, 2021 the UN in Geneva will debate a legally binding outright ban on AI autonomous weapons. I am terrified that governments already have immunity under the law to use these weapons and that governments would support continued use as a strategic advantage over other nations. This is literally the genesis of SkyNet. Just like biological weapons, it would be morally absurd to allow lethal autonomous weapons in military, commercial or personal applications. We need to direct our scarce AI resources to saving lives, health care, solving climate change, housing, equity and an array of other critical issues.

Tiny flying drones, dubbed'slaughterbots', with facial recognition software and weapons capable of mass murder could be the future of warfare. A group of professors have warned the technology is already available to create flying mini killing machines. The Future of Life Institute (FLI), an artificial intelligence watchdog backed by the likes of physicist Stephen Hawking, has produced this chilling video demonstrating how these'slaughterbots' could kill thousands of people. The film is a vision of a dystopian future where tiny drones equipped with explosives, cameras, sensors and face scanners can programmed to carry out deathly instructions by either governments or terrorists. The UN Convention on Conventional Weapons summit in Geneva screened the film and also was heard stark warnings about the growing danger of drone warfare.

"Slaughterbots" directed by Stewart Sugg In a dystopian world a new form of A.I. weaponry has been created. All these drone bots need is a profile: age, sex, fitness, uniform, and ethnicity. Take out your entire enemy virtually risk free. Just characterize him, release the swarm, and rest easy. The 7 minute film opens with a Silicon Valley CEO-type delivering a product presentation to a live audience a la Steve Jobs.

In a dangerous AI "arms race," China is exporting killer drone weapons and pilotless aircraft with AK-47 rifles to combat zones in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, U.K.'s The Sun reported. Nicknamed "slaughterbots" in the report, the stealth weapons can deploy a targeted strike from the air "without a human pressing the fire button," per The Sun, citing a report by the U.S.'s Center for a New American Security (CNAS). "Though many current generation drones are primarily remotely operated, Chinese officials generally expect drones and military robotics to feature ever more extensive AI and autonomous capabilities in the future," the think tank's Gregory C. Allen claims, per the report. "Chinese weapons manufacturers already are selling armed drones with significant amounts of combat autonomy." The report pointed to a "Blowfish A2 drone" advertised as having "full autonomy all the way up to targeted strikes," according to Allen.

Hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals, many of them researchers and engineers prominent in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, vowed on Wednesday never to apply their skills toward the creation of autonomous killing machines. Led by the Future of Life Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit, as many as 160 AI-related companies in 36 countries, and 2,400 individuals in 90 countries, signed the pledge stating that autonomous weapons posed a "clear and present danger to the citizens of every country in the world," and that they would not participate in their development. "Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to play an increasing role in military systems," the pledge states. "There is an urgent opportunity and necessity for citizens, policymakers, and leaders to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI." The signatories, who join 26 United Nations countries that have explicitly called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons, include DeepMind, Google's top AI research team; the European Association for AI; ClearPath Robotics/OTTO Motors; the XPRIZE Foundation, the Swedish AI Society; and University College of London, among others. Leading AI researchers Demis Hassabis, Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, Anca Dragan, Toby Walsh, and Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk are among the individuals who also signed the pledge.

Last month, two parliamentary reports on the involvement of the British intelligence services in torture and rendition were released last week. What has been hypothesized by several journalists is now confirmed: that British functionaries--to include soldiers, civil servants and intelligence officers with MI5 and MI6--knew about and participated in a vast array of human rights abuses committed during the capture and interrogation of terrorism suspects. The Guardian's Peter Beaumont writes with great contempt for what has transpired since 2001, "[A]s it is now quite clear, it was all a bloody lie. The answers given to journalists at the Observer over the years, as well as colleagues at The Guardian and those at other news organisations, as they investigated these allegations, were rotten with untruth and evasion." Governments' lying to their citizens about covert wars is hardly new, nor is the pervasive use of kidnapping of terrorism suspects by the CIA to include its many "black sites."

We consistently see the power of science fiction to inform our views today. The short Sci-Fi clip Slaughterbots is a very well done view of a possible near future of AI and Robotic enabled horror that all of us should see and consider. Of course the point is that we are NOT going to allow this to occur. But the video should inspire us to think beyond that simple fact. We should consider the policies we put in place for development of weapons of all sort.

Whenever you are about to be oppressed, you have a right to resist oppression: whenever you conceive yourself to be oppressed, conceive yourself to have a right to make resistance, and act accordingly. In proportion as a law of any kind--any act of power, supreme or subordinate, legislative, administrative, or judicial, is unpleasant to a man, especially if, in consideration of such its unpleasantness, his opinion is, that such act of power ought not to have been exercised, he of course looks upon it as oppression: as often as anything of this sort happens to a man--as often as anything happens to a man to inflame his passions,--this article, for fear his passions should not be sufficiently inflamed of themselves, sets itself to work to blow the flame, and urges him to resistance. Submit not to any decree or other act of power, of the justice of which you are not yourself perfectly convinced. If a constable call upon you to serve in the militia, shoot the constable and not the enemy;--if the commander of a press-gang trouble you, push him into the sea--if a bailiff, throw him out of the window. If a judge sentence you to be imprisoned or put to death, have a dagger ready, and take a stroke first at the judge.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. Paul Scharre's recent article "Why You Shouldn't Fear'Slaughterbots'" dismisses a video produced by the Future of Life Institute, with which we are affiliated, as a "piece of propaganda." Scharre is an expert in military affairs and an important contributor to discussions on autonomous weapons. In this case, however, we respectfully disagree with his opinions. We have been working on the autonomous weapons issue for several years.