What are the problematic issues related to the development of autonomous weapons?
One of the fundamental ethical problems associated with the use of computer-aided autonomous weapons is the issue of software failure. In addition to being able to make more decisions independent of human input, current autonomous weapons have become increasingly complex in nature and may be more difficult to employ than conventional human-guided weapons. The more complicated the weapons systems become, the greater the risk they run of posing problems because of programming bugs or judgment errors. These risks could potentially lead to critical mistakes in the midst of battle, such as mistaken identification or misinterpreted data, and the consequences of such errors are drastic. Less than a decade ago, the Navy’s highly sophisticated Aegis radar system (designed to identify the friend or foe and military or civilian status of nearby aircraft) led the USS Vincennes to shoot down a civilian Iranian airbus killing all 290 passengers on board. The incident served to prove that, despite th
