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

[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: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.