Originally posted by Ghostavo
So true... 
Computers already control most of the airplanes functions... it's only a matter of time until they control all the ships functions and start "thinking".
e.g. look at the A.I. of any game. Not the scripted things... the A.I. itself... now imagine what a military A.I. would look with our current technology.
Coputers don't really have any true control, though...it's basically a straight translation of the pilots input to respective output functions, or simple actions like correcting flight instability. It's not something that requires 'intelligence' per-se - it basically boils down to mathematical formulas.
Remember that the AI in games is still very basic.... it works well withing a very limited context and often boils down to a simple finite state machine.
Even given that, the level designer often has to provide 'hints' to the AI on what context to use - i.e. Call of Duty uses nodes which indicate suitable cover, etc, which the AI uses in deciding upon actions. The data given to the AI on it's location, what's happening, etc is all in a purpose built format.... in real life, this would be done trhough stuff like visual recognition- and there is no current way for a computer to look at an image and actually understand what it is.... the only forms of visual recognition are based on colour, etc properties or (in the case of web search engines) captions/text nearby , rather than content.
Unfortunately(or not), we are still massively far from automated military hardware, etc. the current level is basically trying to get robots that think and act like insects - i.e. can pathfind, etc.