
Dozens of defense companies are developing lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS), as humanitarian groups seek to build international support for a treaty to ban them, according to a recent report. LAWS, so-called "killer robots," would rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to remove the human from targeting decisions, but how close such systems are to mature development and deployment readiness is a matter of debate in technology circles. "As part of an imminent arms race to develop increasingly autonomous weapons, states rely…