A few years ago, before the inception of Hive, I entered a contest sponsored by @writersblock and entered a short sci-fi story, 'Fresh Meat', about military drones that generated power by digesting corpses that consumed all life on Earth due to buggy code. I won a prize and everything. Here's Part I, Part II, and Part IIIfor those that would like to read it.
I didn't make up the technology, and pyrolysis is a real process that was even used to power automobiles during WWII, when fuel was in short supply in Europe. I wasn't aware of just how non-fiction my story was, until just now. Apparently the only fictional part of my story was the buggy code.
IMG source - Decoy Voice on Youtube
Check it out.
Now that I know DARPA actually made these (I don't believe for a minute DARPA desisted because of ethical issues with corpse eating robots), and that China is making them now, I just wanted to reflect on the fact that only a lack of buggy code is preventing the consumption of all life on Earth by killer robots. Given how well the AI has performed recently, I think we can all not sleep tonight while we research ways to disable killer robots.
I hate being right.