"It turns out, Singer explains, that the US Air Force currently operates according to the principle that a pilotless aircraft, as an entity representing the people who sent it on its mission, “has the same rights as if a person were inside it,” and that this “interpretation of robot rights is official policy for unmanned reconnaissance flights over the Persian Gulf.” But the situation is evolving rapidly. The next generation of military robots is likely to have a high degree of operational independence without yet achieving the kind of intelligent self-awareness that entails responsibility. Luckily there is already something of a legal precedent for handling similar situations. “As odd as it sounds,” Singer writes, “pet law might then be a useful resource in figuring out how to assess the accountability of autonomous systems.”
This is a particularly thought-provoking conclusion given that the researchers now working on military robots seem especially eager to ransack the biological world for elegant solutions to the design problems that have to be overcome. There is a snake-shaped robot that can rear itself up in the grass when it wants to scan its surroundings. Tiny surveillance robots scuttle up walls like bugs, and robot flyers flap their wings. The Navy is testing submersibles that swim like fish. Researchers in the UK have developed a robot whose sensors mimic rat whiskers—since so far no engineer has managed to come up with a sensor system that is better at navigating in total darkness."
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