The UN Will Consider Banning Killer Robots (hrw.org)

Friday the United Nations agreed to discuss a ban on "killer robots" in 2017. The 123 signatories to a long-standing conventional weapons pact "agreed to formalize their efforts next year to deal with the challenges raised by weapons systems that would select and attack targets without meaningful human control," according to Human Rights Watch. "The governments meeting in Geneva took an important step toward stemming the development of killer robots, but there is no time to lose," said Steve Goose, arms director of Human Rights Watch, a co-founder of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. "Once these weapons exist, there will be no stopping them. The time to act on a pre-emptive ban is now."
schwit1 reminded us that IEEE Spectrum ran a guest post Thursday by AI professor Toby Walsh, who addressed the U.N. again this week. "If we don't get a ban in place, there will be an arms race. And the end point of this race will look much like the dystopian future painted by Hollywood movies like The Terminator."

Comments

Re:Meh.

[LWATCDR]

It is also about 60+ years too late. G7es, Mk24 Mine, V1, JB-1 Loon.... All killer robots as is every modern torpedo and missile.

Re:Only if they aren't aimed

[lxs]

As for banning landmines.
There is a landmine treaty which isn't signed by a handful of nations that don't take human rights too seriously. Not surprisingly, the US is on that list, rubbing shoulders with the likes of North Korea, Uzbekistan and Syria.

After all, maiming civilians is what it's all about for these brave warrior nations.

Re:Only if they aren't aimed

[Ambassador Kosh]

The USA also uses limited lifetime landmines so they don't stick around after a conflict to keep killing people. I may not like landmines but I understand why they are used and having ones that self destruct is much better than ones that stay around.

Re:Yes, a law!

[TheRaven64]

Unfortunately, a lot of that R&D is dual use. Self-driving cars will require the same navigation systems as autonomous robots. Remote-controlled drones will require the same chassis and control hardware as autonomous versions. Even the targeting systems can be developed under the ban: the difference between the system on the Apache that can target and prioritise a few hundred targets for the human gunner and one that then fires at the highest priority targets itself is a couple of lines of code. There isn't much that you need to build an autonomous robot soldier that you don't need for something else that such a treaty would permit. It's then just the final assembly step that's needed, and doing that in secret doesn't need too many people to know about it.