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

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.

Comments

Just like anything the UN manadates

[Virtucon]

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.

Re:Just like anything the UN manadates

[crunchygranola]

China is still a permanent member. It was never kicked off at any time.

What did happen was that the UN switched which government was recognized as representing the state of China. Instead of considering the government of the island of Taiwan as representing the entire nation of China, in 1971 the UN switched to recognizing the government of the entire nation of China, except Taiwan. But there has always been a permanent seat for China.

Re:Just like anything the UN manadates

[Anonymous Coward]

If every country agrees to not honor their veto they are essentially kicked off.
Another way could be for everyone else to start a new UN with blackjack and hookers.

Either way would be contrary to the purpose of the UN.

The UN is often described as toothless because of the veto situation, but it was created in a political climate where countries would stop talking to each other and go to war instead.
The purpose of the UN is to have a forum where dialogue can continue between counties even during a world war so that there at least is a chance to resolve matters without killing everyone.
For that to be possible it is necessary that those counties feel that it doesn't put them at disadvantage.
The veto ensures a toothlessness that is necessary for UN to perform its function.

For a similar reason you often see members of the Human Rights Council that you would typically not associate human rights.
The purpose of this is to put them in a position where they have to assign a person that has to take a lead in improving human rights and they will do so from the perspective of their own culture.
This does a lot more to help their people than someone from another culture on the other side of the planet telling them what they should do.

There might be a need for an organization that plays harder with misbehaving countries, but it would be a mistake to transform UN into that organization because then it wouldn't be able to fulfill its current role.

Re:Just like anything the UN manadates

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Just like anything the UN manadates

[rmdingler]

Indeed sir, or madam... although the venue might indicate a predisposition to the former.

The mere fact that a League of Nations could even survive our propensity for tribal warfare between countries, derived of little more than political lines in the earth, it is encouraging.

Diplomacy must remain at arm's length from armed combat, and even if the exercise at times feels toothless, men playing at peace is infinitely an improvement over men playing at war.

Re:Just like anything the UN manadates

[DNS-and-BIND]

Boy, the really troubling part is how you people are just *chomping at the bit* for a big shooting war with Russia. WTF? Trump is a dangerous warmonger, let's replace him and so they he can stop holding us back from the war we so greatly desire?

Re:Just like anything the UN manadates

[DarthVain]

"the veto ensures a toothlessness that is necessary for UN to perform its function", never heard it put that way, but it makes sense at least in a historical context.

At any rate, I see Russia's response as a pretty reasonable one. You can't ban something that doesn't actually exist yet. Even harder is to define exactly what that thing actually is without it actually existing. Depending on how nebulous your wording of what constitutes "autonomous" that could mean any number of things. I know we're all thinking of some Matrix AI type thing, but the reality is no government is going to hand over control like that of any significant military asset like that. This could however impact technologies that say do target identification, and the like. Not all of it scary bad stuff either, when you think about all the friendly fire issues in the modern military past. The technologies could actually *save* lives.

Translation: They have a LAW program nearly ready

[raymorris]

It almost sounds like Russia might not want to ban the weapon they have been developing. Or, the headline and summary are complete bullshit. That happens a lot on Slashdot, misleading clickbait headlines.

Re:So in other words...

[Waffle Iron]

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.

The problem with killer robots....

[mark-t]

... is that once all you have are robots fighting other robots, there is no loss of life and so no reason for one side to surrender.

Such a war could well last until the end of time.

Re:The problem with killer robots....

[networkBoy]

resource depletion.
It would become the new form of the castle siege.

Re:The problem with killer robots....

[alvinrod]

If no one is dying, who cares if the conflict goes on and on and on? I suppose there's an obvious economic hit to both sides as resources are devoted away from whatever else they would normally be used for in order to build more robots, but you have to compare that to the economic hit that already exists from human armies merely existing as well as the loss of human life that they invariably lead to in some capacity. If that's economically cheaper, then I don't see a reason why we should care.

There will always be conflict, it's in our nature. If you can ultimately make war incredibly civilized, there's very little reason not to. Ultimately I think any such attempts would be futile as if you're willing to fight the kind of war that doesn't result in any human casualties because it's so damned civilized, there's not a lot of incentive to ever surrender because there's no penalty for losing if the robots won't actually kill any people.

Re:The problem with killer robots....

[AvitarX]

Could you imagine how much better Vietnam would be right now if instead of massacres, and toxins, and armies rolling back and forth, they instead still had hordes of killer robots fighting?

Or all of the land between Germany and Russia if instead of millions being killed in the war, there were still hordes of killer robots?

Tl;Dr
War sucks, endless war with no soldier deaths probably sucks more.

Re:The problem with killer robots....

[JustNiz]

Its not new form at all. Resource depletion has always been and still is exactly what decides which side wins wars, ever since since the beginning of time.

Usually the resource is money in the form of superior tech and sheer volume of supplies, and just the size of your mass of people that are prepared to line up and be cannon-fodder.

PErfect example is how the Soviets took back Stalingrad in WW2. The Nazis were encircled and firing 1200 rounds a minute from each of hundreds of strategically placed and dug-in MG42 belt-fed machine guns, at a never-ending surge of Russians that had one bolt-action rifle and 6 bullets between every 2 soldiers, yet the Russians still won.

Re:The problem with killer robots....

[Hognoxious]

Robot wars would be pretty boring

It's not the same without Craig Charles.

Re:If only we relied on good old fashioned dumb bo

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Too Late

[rapjr]

Russia's fighters can be flown by remote control. With all the sensors and computers on board a fighter it would seem possible to turn it into an autonomous weapon. The first use of small, cheap autonomous weapons that can track specific individuals will certainly change the landscape. Big autonomous weapons either already exist or just require a software upgrade. If software is the only difference then verification of any treaty becomes almost impossible (maybe spies could detect field tests? Maybe not, just put a pilot/operator in place and have them do nothing or pretend to operate the system.) Without verification is there any other way to control these kinds of munitions? Maybe capturing failed devices that are still intact, reverse engineering them, putting the results on public display, and applying sanctions based on that? Who built the device could be anonymized, but it at least raises the bar of difficulty. Maybe simple methods of blinding sensors+cameras/radios could make autonomous weapons less useful and higher cost, deterring their use? In some sense this isn't a new problem, a weapon with a pilot is essentially an autonomous weapon run by a meat computer (e.g., a person with a gun). The main differences on the horizon are cheapness, smallness, being able to fly, and targeting improvements. Disrupt one or several of those factors and they become less effective or more costly to build. Strong air jets strategically placed inside buildings could perhaps prevent drones from flying indoors without having much effect on people.

Re:Too Late

[mrwireless]

Samsung sells the SGR-A1 machine gun sentry bot that has a fully autonomous mode, meaning it kills anything that comes in front of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

South Korea uses it at the border with North Korea.

Shocked I say . SHOCKED !

[nehumanuscrede]

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

Re:Shocked I say . SHOCKED !

[hcs_$reboot]

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

It seems Namibia and Mauritania do adhere to the ban.

This has to go in stages

[shayd2]

Step 1: Use mustard gas

Step 2: Ban chemical weapons

Step 3: Build large supplies of VX "just in case"

Upshot-- Buy stock in robotics companies

Re:Translation: They have a LAW program nearly rea

[gravewax]

seems more like they have looked at the ridiculousness of what was proposed and said... yeah no, count us out! Seems about as well thought out as Elon Musks comments on AI or that the planet Nibiru will crash into the earth. they don't even have a proper definition of what constitutes LAWS, but whatever definition the UN comes up with you can also guarantee it will exclude all current autonomous or remote weapons systems as neither the US nor any major power is going to start dismantling cruise missles, UAV's etc etc.

Of course killer robots will happen

[Archon]

Anyone who thinks differently is deluding themselves into thinking this world is something it's not. In war, it's the winner who gets to write the rules, and in war for survival, any country is going to use every resource humanly possible to do so.