[zkhalique]

What we should all be concerned about aren't the exports. It's the "imports" -- drones invading our airspace, built by no-name manufacturers and launched by anonymous people, for who knows what purposes.

Even without nefarious goals, a drone can simply malfunction and drop on someone's head, which is already dangerous. But if 1 out of 1000 drones is programmed to do something malicious, how would our legal systems address it? Do we even have a system that could prevent something like that? We've never had to deal with autonomous robots roaming among people before.

What I'm most afraid of is the arms race of drones. It will happen before the AI arms race that Hawking and Musk warn about: http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/27/artificially-assured-destru...

[kenrikm]

Wow, I don't even know where to begin except.. [1]

There are already millions of "drones" out in the world more then capable of doing all of the terrible things you can imagine and yet they don't because there are easier ways to do evil and people who have the desire to do bad things generally choose the easier route.

I would also like to point out Cars kill 38k+ people per year in the US and could also be used for all sorts of bad things (like running people over) should we be worried about all of those imported cars too? Autonomous cars could be instructed to run over a lot of people! Ban Cars!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_mongering

[zkhalique]

One word: autonomous.

Cars aren't.

[dogma1138]

Most modern cars have more electronics in them than any drone on the market.

The difference is that the auto industry is heavily regulated, and even then you got recalls up to the wazoo.

[kenrikm]

Some are, at least to the point that drones are.