As the article explains, the main rule of civilized war is to attack only military targets and not civilians. The authors think robots will be worse at this: "T

As the article explains, the main rule of civilized war is to attack only military targets and not civilians. The authors think robots will be worse at this: "Technical limitations mean robots could not reliably distinguish civilians from combatants, particularly in irregular warfare, and could not fulfill the requirement to judge proportionality." On the contrary, I think robot soldiers will be much better at not hurting civilians. Human soldiers are actually very bad at this, as a century of televised atrocities have shown. Robot soldiers are: - capable of waiting to be fired upon before returning fire - auditable, so mistakes can be corrected or avoided next time - have a clear chain of command, so the military can't deny responsibility for war crimes - not motivated by fear, revenge or cruelty