The Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mitigating existential risks posed by advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, commissioned the film. Founded by a group of scientists and business leaders, the institute is backed by AI-skeptics Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, among others.

The makers of the seven-minute film titled Slaughterbots are hoping the startling dramatization will draw attention to what they view as a looming crisis — the development of lethal, autonomous weapons, select and fire on human targets without human guidance.

The Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mitigating existential risks posed by advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, commissioned the film. Founded by a group of scientists and business leaders, the institute is backed by AI-skeptics Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, among others.

The institute is also behind the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of NGOs, which have banded together to called for a preemptive ban on lethal autonomous weapons.

The timing of the video is deliberate. The film will be screened this week at the United Nations in Geneva during a meeting of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Established in 1980, the convention is a series of framework treaties that prohibits or restricts weapons considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering. For example, the convention enacted a 1995 protocol banning weapons, such as lasers, specifically designed to cause blindness.

Looks like we're all going to need a dog pod grid.

In his 1995 novel The Diamond Age, science fiction author Neal Stephenson wrote about a similar swarm of devices tasked with surveillance and security - the dog pod grid:

Atlantis/Shanghai occupied the loftiest ninety percent of New Chusan's land area - an inner plateau about a mile above sea level, where the air was cooler and cleaner. Parts of it were marked off with a lovely wrought-iron fence, but the real border was defended by something called the dog pod grid - a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats...

These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern about ten centimeters apart...
(Read more about Stephenson's dog pod grid)

Here's a description of what it sounded like when you encountered a space full of autonomous drone aerostats:

Each aerostat in the dog pod grid was a mirror-surfaced, aerodynamic teardrop just wide enough, at its widest part, to have contained a pingpong ball. These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern, about ten centimeters apart near the ground (close enough to stop a dog but not a cat, hence "dog pods") and spaced wider as they got higher. In this fashion a hemispherical dome was limned around the sacrosanct airspace of the New Atlantis Clave. When wind gusted, the pods all swung into it like weathervanes, and the grid deformed for a bit as the pods were shoved around; but all of them eventually worked their way back into place, swimming upstream like minnows, propelling the air turbines. The 'bines made a thin hissing noise, like a razor blade cutting air, that, when multiplied by the number of pods within earshot, engendered a not altogether cheerful ambience...

You could walk through the grid whenever you chose by shoving a few pods out of the way— unless Royal Security had told the pods to electrocute you or blast you into chum. If so, they would politely warn you before doing it.

I should also point out that in his 2012 novel Kill Decision, author Daniel Suarez specifically described a system in which drones used facial recognition to target drone strikes to individuals:

The spotter descends, and we think it searches the vicinity, looking for the victim's face - probably uses a cheap pocket camera face-detection chip to make a list of human faces that it compares with target photos...

Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack.
(Read more about parent drones)

Technovelgy readers are not surprised; hopefully, you've read the following articles (some published as long ago as 2006!):

• Autonomous UAV Surveillance Swarm
  A small flock of prototype multiple-rotor radio-controlled aircraft are being taught basic surveillance strategies.
• Largest Micro-Drone Swarm Release Successful (video)
  103 Perdix drones launched from three F/A-18 Super Hornets demonstrated advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying, and self-healing.
• Crazyflie Drone Swarm Technology (video)
  ...this swarm of 27 gram drones to fly as a coordinated unit.
• Biggest Drone Swarm Sets World Record
  Take a look at this awe-inspiring drone swarming video - see if you can count to 100 drones!
• DARPA Wants Airborne Launch Facility For Drones
  DARPA is interested in developing what amounts to an airborne "aircraft carrier" for launching and retrieving drone aircraft.
• China's Drone Fleet Flies In Formation
  The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) anticipates that future warfare will be “unmanned, invisible, and silent”.
• Drone 100, Coordinated Drone Performance Team (video)
  One hundred coordinated, illuminated drones performed a spectacular choreographed routine over Sydney Harbor, accompanied by the breathtaking sounds of the Sydney Youth Orchestra.
• Robot Swarms Controlled With Augmented Reality (video)
  Frank built an app that can detect robots and objects in the environment and create a virtual grid
• RFly Drones Rule The Warehouse - Find Missing Objects (video)
  Trying to keep track of everything in a warehouse is incredibly tedious and ultimately not possible. Until now.
• Cicada UAV Dropped In Swarms
  The Cicada (Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) is a tiny UAV designed to be dropped in large numbers.