''The Truth About Killer Robots'' is a 2018 documentary made by Third Party Films. It describes the hitherto ignored issues related to

robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

that have been involved in human fatalities.

Plot

The documentary investigates the 2015 killing by a robot of an assembly line manager in a

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...

factory in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, a driverless Tesla car that hit a white truck ahead of it, and the use of drones by the police in the USA (especially in

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

) to drop bombs on snipers and suspects. It also follows the use of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

in facial tracking, use of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

including hotels staffed by them, Geminoids in Japan, and the use of facial recognition for targeted marketing. The films uses Isaac Asimov's ''"

Three Laws of Robotics The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or known as Asimov's Laws) are a set of rules devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story " Runaround" (included in the 1950 colle ...

",'' first proposed by him in his 1942 short story '' Runaround'', and describes how human beings have in recent years ignored them. The film follows these with interviews with experts in the field, footage of real robots being used for

bomb disposal Bomb disposal is an explosives engineering profession using the process by which hazardous Explosive device, explosive devices are rendered safe. ''Bomb disposal'' is an all-encompassing term to describe the separate, but interrelated functi ...

, and "

smart gun A smart gun, also called a smart-gun, or smartgun, is a firearm that can detect its authorized user(s) or something that is normally only possessed by its authorized user(s). The term is also used in science fiction to refer to various types of ...

s" that are able to shoot people automatically based on facial recognition. The film questions the morality of these uses and highlights the inadequacy of the current legal structure to address these issues.

Reception

''The Truth About Killer Robots'' premiered at the

Toronto Film Festival Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor ...

in September 2018. ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

'' found the film interesting, but was critical of the fact that it does not address the widespread use of drones in war torn areas to kill civilians and suspects. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the film has a score of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Truth About Killer Robots, The 2018 films American documentary films Robots 2010s English-language films 2010s American films