There are two main reasons I can think of for removing the human from the equation.

With a human there is accountability. War crime perpetrators might never receive a day of justice.

Humans can exercise choice.

Only a matter of time before they are turned on citizens. Foreign or domestic.

We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.

Ah yes, what a great way to advertise your autonomous murder drones... By using a picture of a manned vehicle.

Physical

Artificial

Me: ❔

To be fair, this isn't AI like ChatGPT or Claude (LLMs) - this is purpose trained AI similar to the stuff running Waymo, Zoox, and even Tesla, with a separate coordination layer on top orchestrating it.

I never thought I'd see the day rainbows got weaponized /s

I can think of at least 2 franchises built around that premise.

Also this:

https://torment-nexus.mathewingram.com/content/images/2024/09/Alex-Blechman-on-X-Sci-Fi-Author-In-my-book-I-invented-the-Torment-Nexus-as-a-cautionary-tale-Tech-Company-At-long-last-we-have-created-the-Torment-Nexus-from-classic-sci-fi-novel-Don-t-Create-The-Torment-Nexus-X.png