Big news out of England yesterday where BAE unveiled "Taranis"--the first stealth UAV. With two weapons bays, the super-drone will not only be able to strike ground targets, but will be capable of engaging aerial targets as well. An air-to-air UAV (or UACV) is interesting enough. But what makes Taranis really intriguing is the claim from BAE that the plane will come equipped with an artificial intelligence system which will make it "autonomous" and give it "deep mission" capabilities. Sounds great!

Worry-wort robotics engineer Noel Sharkey, however, worries to the lefty New Scientist about what those two terms might mean: "We need to know if this means the robot planes will chose their own targets and destroy them," he asks.

That seems pretty improbable. If science fiction has taught us anything, it's that robots never turn against their human masters. And besides, the Taranis looks nothing like the HK-Drone, right? Right?

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