AI on the Battlefield—Replacing Humans?

Is artificial intelligence destined to replace humans on the battlefield? This theoretical question is, increasingly, being answered in practice with "yes." At least that is the conclusion this report on robotics and autonomy of weapons sytems, which is based on a dataset survey of militaries around the globe. For a journalistic summary of the report, you can see this article from Defense One. Here's a taste of that summary:

The Pentagon’s oft-repeated line on artificial intelligence is this: we need much more of it, and quickly, in order to help humans and machines work better alongside one another. But a survey of existing weapons finds that the U.S. military more commonly uses AI not to help but to replace human operators, and, increasingly, human decision making. . . . The report from the Elon Musk-funded Future of Life Institute does not forecast Terminators capable of high-level reasoning. At their smartest, our most advanced artificially intelligent weapons are still operating at the level of insects … armed with very real and dangerous stingers.