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Autonomous killing machines are on their way. And this disturbing short film, Slaughterbots, shows how a combination of artificial intelligence (AI), face recognition technology, and micro explosives can zoom in on targeted individuals to kill them.

While drones used by the US military at present require human control at some level, technological advancement will eliminate this. Many people, including AI professionals, are worried. They suggest it will make things easier for terrorists and make waging war much easier.

“I participated in the making of this film because it makes the issues clear,” Stuart Russell, a AI researcher at UC Berkeley, told Gizmodo. “While government ministers and military lawyers are stuck in the 1950s, arguing about whether machines can ever be ‘truly autonomous’ or are really ‘making decisions in the human sense’, the technology for creating scalable weapons of mass destruction is moving ahead. The philosophical distinctions are irrelevant; what matters is the catastrophic effect on humanity,” he warned.