An Artificial Conscience for Artificial Warriors

The Economist has more on the U.S. military's attempt to build an ethical decision-making framework for autonomous weapon systems. This particular initiative seeks to map out all possible actions & outcomes in order to select the most appropriate or "ethical" behavior. It sounds a bit like Deep Blue's brute force calculation of all possible moves & consequences, however, the decision space of a battlefield is slightly more complex than a chessboard...to say the least.