Communications of the ACM
The Cyborg Insects Are Coming!
Rob Jensen / USAF Via Getty Images
Telepathic helmets. Grid-computing swarms of cyborg insects, some for surveillance, some with lethal stingers. New cognitive-enhancement drugs. (What? Adderall and Provigil aren't good enough for you?) Lethal autonomous robots. Brain-chip-to-weapon platform control systems on a "future force warrior" platform. American military technology is getting very frisky. And most of these technologies will eventually make their way back to civil society with impacts that will probably be more complex and more difficult than anyone can predict.
It's tempting to call a stop to deployment of such emerging technologies. But that approach promises to be as successful as "Just Say No" was in the war on drugs, or as the original Luddites were at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The United States will develop these strange and alarming new technologies, but not, perhaps, for the reasons that many suspect.
From Slate
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