‘Slaughterbot’ film warns tiny drones could carry out murders

Swarms of tiny drones flown by artificial intelligence and programmed to assassinate human targets using a few grams of explosives have been forecast by a British academic in a dystopian short film.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) called Slaughterbots are the subject of a collaboration between AI expert Professor Stuart Russell and the Future of Life Institute, an AI watchdog supported by Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

The seven-minute video starts with an Apple-style keynote presentation and shows palm-sized UAVs carrying facial recognition technology and explosives to commit untraceable civilian massacres.

The microdrones, modified versions of toy gadgets now on sale for £20, have reactions 100 times faster than soldiers.

The film shows the weapons targeting politicians and tracking people by their social media posts.

Professor Russell, an AI expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “Allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom.”