photo credit: NiWoTa Studios

The US air force published its “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009–2047″ in July, predicting the deployment of fully autonomous attack planes.

The document suggests that humans will play more of a role “monitoring the execution of decisions” than actually making the decisions.

“Advances in AI will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input,” says the report.

BBC — Call for debate on killer robots.

Why this is a bad idea:

A South African bank has outfitted its ATMs with pepper spray to prevent criminals from bombing or tampering with the machines. But the system still has some bugs: One of the machines released its stinging payload on three maintenance workers last week.

Wired’s Threat Level — Pepper Spray-Armed ATM Misfires, Shoots Workers