This article from Defense One concerning the military's spending of money on projects to study the feasibility of developing "moral" robots shows us how far off the rails we really are. First, the civil government and the military that it equips and trains are doing everything they can to remove the moral compass of actual human beings on a daily basis. At the same time that Judeo-Christian ethics are being openly discouraged in the military, they are hoping to somehow create a "moral" robot. I'm sure that the government would love nothing more than a complacent robot to do their bidding that reacted according to the government directed programming rather then having to deal with human beings that can think for themselves. I can only imagine the level of mischief that could be unleashed with a robotic army that can change "morality" not through extensive learning and study, but at the touch of the keystroke. Pardon the use of Star Wars to make my point, but since we are talking robots....at one point in Episode 3, the Jedis are going along just fine doing what they do taking out the bad guys when all of the sudden the guns of their own "robots" in the form of clone troopers are turned against them by the Emperor who initiated a code which essentially changed the "moral" rules delineating who was an enemy.
You see, as with almost every other issue when dealing with the government, it ultimately comes down to control. In this case, a robotic army is much easier to control than a human agent that has actual free will. Sure, you can program in scenarios that articulate the most pragmatic or utilitarian ways in which to approach the battlefield, but at the end of the day, the robot has no free will to disregard what the programmer/government is commanding. And that should be enough to scare anyone who considers such technology actually beneficial in any possible way.
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