Comment by Evan Ackerman

We’re not going to be able to prevent autonomous armed robots from existing. The real question that we should be asking is this: Could autonomous armed robots perform better than armed humans in combat, resulting in fewer casualties on both sides? The problem with this argument is that no letter, UN declaration, or even a formal ban ratified by multiple nations is going to prevent people from being able to build autonomous, weaponized robots. The barriers keeping people from developing this kind of system are just too low. [...] What we really need, then, is a way of making autonomous armed robots ethical, because we’re not going to be able to prevent them from existing. I’m not in favor of robots killing people. If this letter was about that, I’d totally sign it. But that’s not what it’s about; it’s about the potential value of armed autonomous robots, and I believe that this is something that we need to have a reasoned discussion about rather than banning.