A University at Buffalo research team has published a paper that implies that the rush to ban and demonize autonomous weapons or "killer robots" may be a temporary solution, but the actual problem is that society is entering into a situation where systems like these have and will become possible.
Killer robots are at the center of classic stories told in films such as "The Terminator" and the original Star Trek television series' "The Doomsday Machine," yet the idea of fully autonomous weapons acting independently of any human agency is not the exclusive license of science fiction writers.
Killer robots have a Pentagon budget line and a group of non-governmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, is already working collectively to stop their development.
Governance and control of systems like killer robots needs to go beyond the end products.
"We have to deconstruct the term 'killer robot' into smaller cultural techniques," says Tero Karppi, assistant professor of media study, whose paper with Marc Böhlen, UB professor of media study, and Yvette Granta, a graduate student at the university, appears in the International Journal of Cultural Studies.
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