Microsoft President: The Terminator Is Inevitable - Rise of Killer Robots 'Unstoppable'

I’m fairly sure this will end badly.

The Telegraph:

“The rise of killer robots is now unstoppable and a new digital Geneva Convention is essential to protect the world from the growing threat they pose, according to the President of the world’s biggest technology company.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, said the use of ‘lethal autonomous weapon systems’ poses a host of new ethical questions which need to be considered by governments as a matter of urgency.

He said the rapidly advancing technology, in which flying, swimming or walking drones can be equipped with lethal weapons systems – missiles, bombs or guns – which could be programmed to operate entirely or partially autonomously, “ultimately will spread… to many countries”.

The US, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia and the UK are all developing weapon systems with a significant degree of autonomy in the critical functions of selecting and attacking targets. …

Smith said killer robots must “not be allowed to decide on their own to engage in combat and who to kill” and argued that a new international convention needed to be drawn up to govern the use of the technology. …”

Looking ahead to the 2020s and 2030s, this is going to be the big new thing just as the roll out of the personal computer and cell phone was in the 1990s and the smartphone and social media was in the 2000s and 2010s. The Yang campaign is the first wake up call.

The real question though is less about the robot soldiers which will replace humans in militaries around the world than what happens to all the millions of people who will be displaced from the workforce by robot workers. As machines start producing more and more wealth and human labor becomes less and less necessary over time, how does the current system manage that?

Unfortunately, we’re not able to discuss the real issues and looming challenges of our time. This barely registers in mainstream political discourse. The politicians are discussing issues like “reparations for slavery” in 2019 around 150 years after the demise of slavery.