External Link - Source: Wall Street Journal
Could a machine ever be capable of making the practical and ethical decisions demanded of American troops in the field? Dr. Arkin thinks so. In fact, his work has been motivated in large part by his concerns about the failures of human decision-makers in the heat of battle, especially in attacking targets that aren’t a threat. The robots “will not have the full moral reasoning capabilities of humans,” he explains, “but I believe they can—and this is a hypothesis—perform better than humans.”