Am I alone in having a few misgivings about this idea?

The Department of Defense has put out a call: design a pack of robots. A so-called Multi-Robot Pursuit System would be used to “search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject.” Each robot has to weigh 100 kilograms or less, act autonomously (with a human squad leader), negotiate obstacles, and provide immediate feedback. The robots would report back to a human operator, and defer to that human when the robot AI determines that a “difficult decision” is required.

The first phase of development is to create the sensors for detecting humans and to conduct feasibility experiments. Then comes the building of a prototype with fully functional sensors. At that point, a third phase would try to establish whether a pack of such robots — about three to five in number — could realistically be used for missions involving, according to the proposal, “search and rescue, fire-fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical, and radiation sensing with mobile platforms.”

Maybe it’s growing up on a constant diet of sci-fi, but it seems to be that coming up with innovative ways for robots to hunt humans is something that bears a bit more scrutiny than it appears to be getting.

(link via Warren Ellis)