“In the longer term, fully robotic soldiers may be developed and deployed, particularly by wealthier countries,” the paper says (thankfully, no plans to add ‘living tissue’ on the outside are mentioned). The study thus foresees the Pentagon playing a largely supervisory role over autonomous machines as increasingly central to all dimensions of warfare—from operational planning to identifying threats via surveillance and social media data-mining; from determining enemy targets to actually pursuing and executing them.

Pentagon officials are worried that the US military is losing its edge compared to competitors like China, and are willing to explore almost anything to stay on top—including creating watered-down versions of the Terminator. Taken together, the “scientific revolutions” catalogued by the NDU report—if militarized—would grant the Department of Defense (DoD) “disruptive new capabilities” of a virtually totalitarian quality. Pentagon-funded research on data-mining feeds directly into fine-tuning the algorithms used by the US intelligence community to identify not just ‘terror suspects’, but also targets for the CIA’s drone-strike kill lists.It is far from clear that the Pentagon’s Skynet-esque vision of future warfare will actually reach fruition. That the aspiration is being pursued so fervently in the name of ‘national security,’ in the age of austerity no less, certainly raises questions about whether the most powerful military in the world is not so much losing its edge, as it is losing the plot.

As Ray Kurzweil speaks to the Observer New Review about the impending advances in artificial intelligence, it seems a good time to heed the warning of such screen classics as Alien, The Terminator and Blade Runner and look back at the rogue computers, robots and replicants that have brought death, disquiet and destruction to humankind. Enjoy, before it's too late

RT @Mynorthwest: Beware the killer robots @thedaveross talks treaty to keep humans in control @clearpathrobots

“Maybe the danger is [a robot] doing exactly what we @mgubrud intended

Killer robots are here and we must stop them, expert says

SPECIAL GUEST: Mary Wareham (of Human Rights Watch, the Campaign To Stop Killer Robots). An important question faces the human race. Will we decide to "outsource" the decision to take a human life to machines? Do we need autonomous killing machines as part of our military technological arsenal? Perhaps this seems like science fiction to you... but while most of us go about our day-to-day lives, this science fiction scenario is already beginning to come true.

RT @BanKillerRobots: Nice Q's from audience "Do references to science fiction by the media help or hurt the campaign" Our answer? We want t…

For a long time Hollywood has warned of killer robots turning on humans - now they're a reality and the UN is worried. "Technology is a tool and it should remain a tool, but it is a dangerous tool and should be held under scrutiny. We need to try to define the elements of needful human control," he said.

"You see this [science fiction inspiration] in everything from what scientists decide to invent to what Congress and the military decides to fund," Singer said. "It shapes expectations when people think 'This is what the future is going to be, so we should invest in that today.'"