It's kind of cute how the Roomba moves around your filthy floors, methodically getting every corner and high-traffic area, until the battery dies and it stops in exhaustion because it couldn't make it back to the self-charging station, its red light blinking helplessly, as it calls out in that polite third-person voice, "Please charge Roomba." Please!

And then there's the "BigDog," an evolving series of terrifying robots designed by Boston Dynamics. Early versions of BigDog were impressive enough, with their ability to carry heavy loads through deep mud and across icy slopes. And when that video of someone kicking BigDog hit the Internet several years ago, you could [...]

Here, the five most terrifying bits from the must-read article "The Terminator Scenario: Are We Giving Our Military Machines Too Much Power?"

• "If we make smart machines without equally smart control systems, we face a scenario in which some day, by way of a thousand well-intentioned decisions, each one seemingly sound, the machines do in fact take over all the “key functions” that once were our domain. Then 'we blink' and find that the world is one we no longer are able to comprehend or control."

• "A soldier back from duty in 2006 told Singer that a ground robot he operated in Iraq would sometimes 'drive [...]