What's important to remember is that we get to Slaughterbots with "best intentions." Trying to feel safer. Trying to kill our enemies. Trying to protect our friends, families, children. Little by little is how it happens. The road to hell is paved, after all.

Well, no. People with outright evil intentions, the kind that would hire a hitman, definitely also pour money and brains into the very same research.

Technologies are morally agnostic: a knife, a rifle, a piece of cryptography, they all work equally well for the noblest and the most nefarious purposes. It's the humans' task to structure the society in such a way that good uses of technology mostly dominate evil uses.