When I was a lot younger, I used to play softair sometimes with my friends (wargames with BBs gun). I seriously researched ways to build automatic turrets.<p>Rules are simple: shoot at a foe until it raises its hand, that means the person was shot.<p>Unfortunately (?), the available software at the time was subpar, and I forgot about it because of two problems:<p>* How to identify a foe? It would need facial/body recognition from a few set of examples (team pictures before starting, better if it shots everything else).<p>* How to know when to stop shooting?<p>These new technologies would make almost trivial to build such an application, and make it quite reliable. I guess there is a market for this in softair... I'm even tempted to have a go at it, BUT... I don't think I will because I now have to ponder the ethics of building something that can take a gun, identify targets, aim at them accurately, and fire until they are down. I am usually all in on open source software, but that's just the kind of things that sound dangerous to share (same as defense distributed, TBH).<p>I hope enough persons share the same misgivings, otherwise there is no point for me to refrain from building this. (Except perhaps spending my time on project that are actually useful for humankind).