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Russia Says It Will Ignore Any UN Ban of Killer Robots (ibtimes.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the fingers-in-your-ears dept.

According a report from Defense One, a United Nations meeting in Geneva earlier this month on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) was derailed when Russia said they would not adhere to any prohibitions on killer robots. "The U.N. meeting appeared to be undermined both by Russia's disinterest in it and the framework of the meeting itself," reports International Business Times. "Member nations attempted to come in and define what LAWS' systems would be, and what restrictions could be developed around autonomous war machines, but no progress was made." From the report: In a statement, Russia said that the lack of already developed war machines makes coming up with prohibitions on such machines difficult. "According to the Russian Federation, the lack of working samples of such weapons systems remains the main problem in the discussion on LAWS... this can hardly be considered as an argument for taking preventive prohibitive or restrictive measures against LAWS being a by far more complex and wide class of weapons of which the current understanding of humankind is rather approximate," read the statement.

7 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Just like anything the UN manadates by Virtucon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If a nation truly wants to ignore the UN, it can ignore it. The repercussions for Russia are negligible because they're on the Security Council as a permanent member, they'll veto any resolutions that have any teeth attempting to sanction them.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:Just like anything the UN manadates by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You act like that's a bad thing. If anything were binding you'd see plenty of states trying to use the UN as a cudgel, as in "Me and this army" types of approaches. Most countries don't have the political will for such things to begin with and even if enough did, the UN would tear itself apart in short order and likely lead to large scale conflict, the type of thing it was meant to prevent.

      It's far better that it's utterly toothless. At least it allows the world's countries to come together and air their grievances before everyone else.

    2. Re:Just like anything the UN manadates by KiloByte · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Doesn't sound like it's working. Case in point: there's a Hitler-style war going on right now: concentration camps, mass-bombing civilian cities with no military presence whatsoever, etc. And US and UK are helping.

      And, do you even hear a word about Yemen in the news? Likewise, the Wikipedia article has a table of "alleged" war crimes that lists a bunch of one- or two-digit incidents, without a mention of those with thousands.

      Or, when Georgia and Ukraine got invaded by their neighbour bloody dictator, did the US and UK (who even made such a promise in return for Ukraine getting rid of nuclear weapons) intervene?

      Sorry, but the UN is toothless. It plays no useful role.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  2. Re:So in other words... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm guessing the Russians aren't even going to bother building these robots themselves.

    The Russians might just wait until the US creates an army of killer robots, then hack into them and turn them against their owners. This strategy has already worked great when it was applied to our election system.

  3. Re:If only we relied on good old fashioned dumb bo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only difference between a cruise missile and a drone is that the drone comes back. I'm not really sure what the uproar over killer drones are.

    Then pay closer attention to the word "autonomous". Both the cruise missile and the drone have a human being who decides what the target is. An *autonomous* drone picks its own target.

  4. Too Late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There already are "killer robots". What do you call a Tomahawk cruise missile that can fly hundreds of miles and independently identify it's target then dive in and blow up. What do you call an AEGIS cruiser in full "auto" mode that identifies threats and fires off missiles as required to neutralize them. The only thing worth discussing is exactly how much automation would be permitted.

  5. Shocked I say . SHOCKED ! by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Show of hands . . . .

    Who here believes ANY COUNTRY is going to adhere to a " terminator " ban ?

    I'm pretty sure none of them will. . . . . they just won't be as blatant about it :D