Military robots are getting smaller and more capable

ON NOVEMBER 12th a video called "Slaughterbots" was uploaded to YouTube. It is the brainchild of Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, and was paid for by the Future of Life Institute (FLI), a group of concerned scientists and technologists that includes Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal. It is set in a near-future in which small drones fitted with face-recognition systems and shaped explosive charge...