Military robots and the future of war

the idea that robots fighting robots as the future of war has been expressed in science fiction novels and movies so many times, but at the same time, science fiction seems to always have some information about what we face with each new day in real life.

The de-humanization of war appears closer to us than many saw coming. It raises a lot of questions like, does the war we're not even really fighting matter? We feel no casualties and aren't even taxed but for money and building the things.

What happens when a robot, maybe not even controlled by a person, kills somebody? What happens to the psyche of the person behind the controls? Where does necessity for conflict end, and pure desire for carnage or confrontation begin?

These are mere speculations, but it is a very scary prospect: that this might be our future. And there isn't really a way for the american public to vote NO, because we don't have a direct influence on the technology development of our military.

Scary thought. There may be a bright side to it, but I don't see it.

I'm not looking forward to Artificial Intelligence in these things either, if THAT ever comes to fruition.

I've been asking most of these same questions for the past eleven years. Mostly though, I've been asking "would war have the same impact on people, and therefore the same meaning." Basically, war matters because people die, and when people are removed, it starts the question of "does this war matter?" and totally numbs out the purpose of the fighting. This is robot on robot conflict, which is what I had predicted, but there's also the matter that the speaker had touched on with what happens when a robot kills a human. Science fiction is an amazing genre, because it is a method of asking questions and guessing what may happen 'if' things were different or changed. We ended up going to the moon on science fiction's predictions, so I think the question should be posed toward the creative minds that think of such possibilities to come. That would help us have a better scope to see possible outcomes from war technologies.