I read a article in the paper today at work about the US military making robots with Artificial Intelligence and that a gobal debate is needed...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8182003.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5966243/Military-killer-robots-could-endanger-civilians.html

'Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Sharkey said at a meeting in London.

"The problem is that this is all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."

This is scary stuff, I believe if man can create speam in a test-tube then Im sure we can create robots that think for themselfs.  Seems like films like Terminator and I-robot might come true one day.

As long as battery tech stays shit, we'll be fine.

Oh no, the robots are revolting.... for 4 hours, and then they'll need to recharge.

"Good job breaking it, Hero"

US military already has this.

i can't wait for the skynet invasion to begin

And another step towards the end of human civilisation begins.

they do already have this. You have seen Aliens with the sentry guns? Well along the magical concrete border wall that Hallburton wants to build to "protect" America from Mexico (or should this be reversed?) the guns will have cameras for temperature and face detection, its already happening.

Don't worry, Skynet is no match for teh C3LL.

Oh and let's not forget about AI controlled (or assisted) drone aircraft accidently bombing weddings, the wrong house or childrens parties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hal 9000 had a perfect operational record, but it was humans that programmed it to begin with.

I have never seen any confirmed reports of this, have you?  Much more common is a terrorist bombing an event to blame it on others - which I do remember hearing confirmed reports of.

@topic,

As far as I know we have yet to move over to a point where an AI is given the "kill decision" as its termed.  Right now we have AI controlled maneuvering and targeting but a human is always at the trigger making the decision to fire or not.  The goal is definitely to get to the point where this happens but even then as was pointed out earlier battery life (among a myriad of other issues) will always limit their ability for any sort of global domination.

For those in the know the real key to when we should worry is not when robots are given the choice to kill or not - but instead when robots are allowed to design and build other robots with the goal of advancing their intellect.  At that point the designs will quickly become more and more advanced and then we risk being overrun with a super-intellect that can solve the "problems" (otherwise known as our failsafes) in its path to world domination.  All of this of course assumes that such a super-intellect would even be motivated to work against us rather than with us but who knows =P