Cars are already close to driving themselves down the highway. How far are we then from military weapons systems that decide on their own when and where to fire?

“You want the scary answer?” asks Clearpath Robotics co-founder and CTO Ryan Gariepy. “We can do it right now, with parts I bought off the Internet.”

Clearpath, a 70-person Canadian firm that develops unmanned ground vehicles andautonomous control software for both military and commercial clients, recently becamethe first company to join a growing movement calling for an international treaty that bans so-called “lethal autonomous weapons.”