An autonomous weapon is a weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.
Further reading
Piper, Kelsey (2019) Death by algorithm: the age of killer robots is closer than you think, Vox, June 21.
External links
Lethal AWS. A website containing several resources with a view to raising awareness about the possible dangers of autonomous weapons.
Related entries
AI governance | AI risk | armed conflict | near-term AI ethics | terrorism
I added a Bibliography section with https://autonomousweapons.org/
But I haven’t spent much time checking out the site, and I suspect I might feel at least parts of it are more alarmist/sensationalist than would be ideal (e.g., the Slaughterbots video). So there’s some small chance that it’s net negative to link to the site here, at least when it’s the only Bibliography link. There’s also some chance that it’d be better to somehow include some sort of disclaimer, or pair that link with a couple other links that give quite different perspective.