Should Autonomous Weapons be Banned?

Should Autonomous Weapons be banned? It is not exactly an easy question to answer. There are multiple reasons to support both sides of this dilemma. For example one side of the conversation could support the use of autonomous weapons by saying how they would prevent the death of a country’s soldiers on the battlefield, while still being able to complete missions and help win the war for the country. This would also limit the use of humans in a battlefield, and usher a new age onto the battlefield. Leaving robots and drones alike to fulfill the missions and duties of the soldiers who would usually put their lives on the line in the same situations. This would more than likely become a very popular choice among the country, but what if the opposing country was to obtain the same information on how to produce these types of weaponry? Then it would essentially be a battle between machines, the only possible ending to a war of this caliber would be due to the limitations of the countries productions of such weapons. Leaving only the most technologically advanced countries to continue on with the wars. A reason to ban autonomous weapons would be due to their ability to decide on their own without the interactions of humans. Leaving them fully operational on the amount of programming they were instilled with. If one problem arises within the code, a misjudgment could result and cause a more significant problem than what it was supposed to solve. For example the autonomous weapons would be given the algorithms to decide if the initial target is truly a target, and if the program was mistyped, the wrong person or building could be compromised and a lot of people could die as a result. Which would be a major problem within the dependability of the machines. But in the long term of things these types of weapons are only limited to the amount of time we are willing to dedicate to improving upon and developing new forms of autonomous weaponry. If we abandon the idea of autonomous weapons, that leaves the chance for other rival nations to gain an upper hand. But at the same time, it’s only right to set up a list of regulations and expectations that each country must oblige by in order to continue on with the development of such weapons. In the end, these types of weapons will be produced without the consent of the public either way. The only thing the nations can do is vote on the regulations and laws that could potentially limit the growth or the use of the weapons.