When May a Robot Kill? New DOD Policy Tries to Clarify

"Did you think the Pentagon had a hard rule against using lethal autonomous weapons? It doesn’t."

Nope. Never thought that. The military has one high-profile system that was designed to deliver autonomous lethal fires since the mid-80s (actually was one of the first). So they've been doing that for almost 40 years now.

The Patriot missile systems has the capability to go fully autonomous against Air Breathing Threats (ABTs - i.e., aircraft). We used to call this the "flip the switch and dive in the bunker" mode. The concept was for a 'Fulda Gap' scenario where the Russian Hordes would be coming in. Flip it to automatic and the system will classify targets based on speed, IFF squawking, flight profile, etc. and if it is classified as a threat, automatically engage it.

Is it operated in that mode? Nope .. well, not against ABTs that is. It is operated in that mode against Tactical Ballistic Missile mode (TBM ... i.e., those SCUDs that were fired at us during DS/DS), but those aren't considered 'lethal fires' because it is being used defensively against non-living targets.

And the singularity draws ever closer

An inevitable decision as AI becomes more commonplace, thanks for sharing.