Could the greatest threat to humans not be Al Gore, nor monkeys riding dolphins, nor dogs walking and riding on two legs, nor our fellow primates, but rather be military robots staging a revolt? That's the absurd assumption from the U.S. Navy (link, 63A2):

Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.

The stark warning – which includes discussion of a Terminator-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters – is issued in a hefty report funded by and prepared for the US Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research .

The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.

Humans have nothing to worry about. Robots are built by humans themselves and, until such time as advanced microprocessors make artificial intelligence a reality, robots will always do what humans program them to do. E4558A29.