Thinking hard on AI

India's consideration of AI-based weapons systems, though right, would need to consider various legal and ethical conundrums

The intellectual roots of artificial intelligence (AI) date back to Greek mythology, but the term has become part of the popular discourse only after science fiction (sci-fi) films, such as The Terminator, gave the public a fictional glimpse of combat between AI beings and humans. An example of an autonomous weapon in use today is the Israeli Harpy drone, which is programmed to fly to a particular area, hunt for specific targets, and then destroy them using a high-explosive warhead nicknamed “Fire and Forget”.

At its simplest, AI is a field of computer science that allows computers and machines to perform