The unmanned drones dropping laser-guided bombs in Pakistan do what they are told. But now the military is pursuing ethically programmed robots that could make autonomous decisions about when and when not to fire. As roboethicist Ronald Arkin has argued, these robots might very well act more humanely than humans.  This may not be a high bar, as our moral sense is easily impaired by anger or numbed by fear amidst the fog of war. Unlike humans, robots can be programmed to painstakingly follow a moral or legal code. The appeal of military robots is not simply that they are a useful tool like a gun or a tank; the appeal is that robots are actually better than humans at being humane.

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