Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

An Israeli Air Force Heron TP surveillance drone, known as the IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries).

Earlier this month, the CIA killed a top al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, according to US officials. The method of attack was a CIA drone strike, and while details of the method remain secret, in all likelihood the drone was controlled remotely by a pilot thousands of miles away from the scene.

But what if there wasn't even a pilot in a far-away land? What if the drone had been programmed to locate certain characteristics of the al-Qaeda operative and execute a kill without any direct human involvement? As The Washington Post reported recently, the military wants even more sophisticated unmanned technology to fight its enemies. It's said robots can act faster in challenging real-time scenarios. Scientific advances could lead to drones hunting, identifying and killing a targeted enemy based on calculations made by software.

The developments are so worrying to a group of scientists that they are calling for an international ban on "automated lethality." The International Committee for Robot-Arms Control says all the ethical, legal and societal factors of war cannot be programmed into an automaton. How far along are scientists in developing such drones?

WEIGH IN:

How sophisticated could they be and should they be? Is it realistic to think that humans can be taken so far outside of the loop? Should there be a ban on "automated lethality" before the military is even capable of it? What about the current use of drones -- do you support the Obama administration reportedly expanding use outside of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia?

Guests:

Ron Arkin, Regents’ Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, has published extensively on autonomous systems; Consultant in the area of intelligent robotic systems

Peter Asaro, Founder, International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and Professor at The New School in New York