ABSTRACT
People can engage in consensual violent behavior like boxing, rough sex, and extreme bingo, since the robots would only be activated when one person actively calls for help. The police robots are programmed to detect when someone is actively causing harm or attempting to cause harm against other people. The moral challenge for police and military robots is: how to manage the correct response to a criminal or enemy who is actively threatening others? Contractarianism has some answers: optimize the predicted harm done to the victim against the harm caused in neutralizing the criminal. Robots are already in use by the militaries of major industrialized countries like China, Russia, and the United States, but these are human-controlled or semi-autonomous, much like the driver-assist technologies present in many vehicles on the road right now. This is an offence against the whole human species, and against the peace and safety that the law of nature provides for the species.
