There's little doubt in my mind this technology will be employed to exterminate villages full of "terrorists" by the US military in the future. You don't even need to invoke AI for that scenario, just VR and maybe whatever Google puts into their autonomous cars.

There's no need to exterminate anything. When you have robotic infantry deployed at theater scale, a largely non-lethal peacekeeping approach could be taken with relative ease.

I'd argue robotic infantry would be a massive leap towards improving the security and humanitarian situations in some of the world's most terrible places.

Unlike long-term deployment of human soldiers, political will wouldn't really factor in to robotic deployments. That would translate to less genocide and suffering in the world.

>Unlike long-term deployment of human soldiers, political will wouldn't really factor in to robotic deployments.

Aren't all military deployments an expression of political will, though?

At one point at least, people surmised that atomic weapons would lead to greater success in peace-keeping throughout the world. Not so sure it's turning out that way.