Autonomous robots are going to be really effective in all the places where it is difficult for a human to survive and where decision making is mediated be techn

Autonomous robots are going to be really effective in all the places where it is difficult for a human to survive and where decision making is mediated be technology, not human senses. So, they are going to be really effective deep underwater, in space, and in high-g aerial combat at radar range. Setting aside the moral question, there is also the institutional issue that officers may not like to see pilots replaced with drones, sailors with UUAVs, etc. That creates this dangerous place where the US military can have it's manned systems disrupted by cheaper unmanned ones. I think that is dangerous for me. As far as the moral issue: What is the difference between a machine firing a missile at a plane it believes is attacking and an officer on a ship pressing a button to fire that missile based on the risk assessment of a machine that tells the officer that an airliner is an attacker. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 In that case the crew may have made a mistake in judgement. But it is easy to see a potential future case where no human interpretation is better than how a computer interprets the incoming data, and humans have to act on the computer's judgement alone. We can insert humans in the loop but that may not really mean anything.