'Civilians will be put in harm's way,' expert warns as first autonomous drone kills revealed

Cover image: A PROPOS © FRANCE 24

A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry has said that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties, according to a report in New Scientist. Speaking on FRANCE 24, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, explains that these systems "are fully indiscriminate; whether the system sees a combatant, a child, an old person, it won't be able or won't be designed to discriminate, so civilians are going to be put in harm's way".