University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey recently stated that armed military robots "pose a threat to humanity."

The armed robots that have been fielded so far all have a human controlling the trigger. He thinks that could change. I agree. As AI's grow in power we will be tempted to take humans out of the loop. We shouldn't do this.

Sharkey also stated that terrorists might reverse engineer these devices and start using them instead of suicide bombers. Terrorists, of course, will use any method at their disposal, but I doubt seriously that reverse-engineering our robots will be the way they go.

The SWORDS robot.
Click the picture for a better look.

It is much more likely that terrorists will continue to use off-the-shelf devices. Terrorists, of course, already use "improvised explosive devices" (IED's) in Iraq.

"01 Call Missed."

If a terrorist duct taped an IED to a remote controlled 1/8 sized model car (like this one - video at the link), he could chase down a crowd of civilians or a squad of soldiers at 45 mph with little risk to himself. And he could do it for less than $500. With simple cheap possibilities like that, it's just not likely that they would spend the money necessary to reverse-engineer our robots.

Robots like the SWORDS already help defend our soldiers against IED's. Our need for these robots would only increase if the terrorists started improvising robots of their own.