UN urged to ban ‘killer robots’ before they go into Production!
April 11, 2015 – Fully autonomous weapons, already known and denounced as “killer robots”, should be banned by international treaty before they can be developed and put into production, a new report urges the United Nations! But have the plans to go ahead with this development already been signed off!?
Under the existing laws, all computer programmers, manufacturers and military commanders would all pretty much escape liability for deaths caused by such machines, according to the recent study published on Thursday 9th April 2015, by Human Rights Watch and also the Harvard Law School. Nor is there likely to be any clear legal framework in future that would establish the responsibility of those involved in producing or operating advanced weapons systems, say the authors of ‘Mind the Gap: The Lack of Accountability for Killer Robots’.
Just imagine the scene, watching Robots armed on the streets like a scene from the film Robocop or armed robots in the war zone fighting foreign enemies…..what happens if they one day decide to take the law into their own hands!?
The risk of killer Robots with a mind of their own could end up being disaster for the Human Race (scene from Terminator)
This report is released ahead of an international meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems at the UN in Geneva which is starting on the 13th April 2015. The session will discuss additions to the convention on certain conventional weapons.
Also known as the ‘inhumane weapons’ convention, the treaty has been regularly reinforced by new protocols on emerging military technology. Blinding laser weapons were pre-emptively outlawed in 1995 and combatant nations since 2006 have been required to remove unexploded cluster bombs.
Modern day Military deployment of the current generation of drones in the air is defended by the UK’s Ministry of Defence and other governments around the world on the grounds that there is always a man or woman “in the loop”, ultimately deciding whether or not to press the ‘attack’ button. Although rapid technical progress towards the next stage of automation, in which weapons may actually select their very own targets, has alarmed scientists and human rights campaigners across the world!
“Fully autonomous weapons do not yet exist,” the report acknowledges. “But technology is moving in their direction, and precursors are already in use or development. For example, many countries use weapons defence systems – such as the Israeli Iron Dome and the US Phalanx and C-RAM – that are programmed to respond automatically to threats from incoming munitions.
The UK’s most advanced ‘Un-manned’ war plane ~ The Taranis!
“Prototypes exist for planes that could autonomously fly on intercontinental missions [the UK’s Taranis] or take off and land on an aircraft carrier [the US’s X-47B].
“The lack of meaningful human control places fully autonomous weapons in an ambiguous and troubling position. On the one hand, while traditional weapons are tools in the hands of human beings, fully autonomous weapons, once deployed, would make their own determinations about the use of lethal force.
“They would thus challenge longstanding notions of the role of arms in armed conflict, and for some legal analyses, they would be more akin to a human soldier than to an inanimate weapon. On the other hand, fully autonomous weapons would fall far short of being human.”
The report calls for an immediate prohibition “on the development, production and use of fully autonomous weapons through an international legally binding” agreement, and urges states to adopt similar domestic laws.
The MANY hurdles to accountability for the production and use of fully autonomous weapons under current law are monumental, the report states. “Weapons could not be held accountable for their conduct because they could not act with criminal intent, would fall outside the jurisdiction of international tribunals and could not be punished.
“Criminal liability would likely apply only in situations where humans specifically intended to use the robots to violate the law. In the United States at least, civil liability would be virtually impossible due to the immunity granted by law to the military and its contractors and the evidentiary obstacles to products liability suits.”
“No accountability means no deterrence of future crimes, no retribution for victims, and no social condemnation of the responsible party. The many obstacles to justice for potential victims show why we urgently need to ban fully autonomous weapons.”Bonnie Docherty, HRW’s senior arms division researcher and the report’s lead author
* Human Rights Watch is a co-founder of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which is supported by more than 50 NGOs and supports a pre-emptive ban on the development, production and use of fully autonomous weapons.
Could we soon be seeing Robots on the streets who can decide when to use deadly force?! At the moment it appears not, but in the Future…..Our Governments have been know to make their own decisions on these types of things before!
U.I.P Summary
When things like this are usually discussed by world leaders and military Generals it usually means one important thing, they are usually already working on the development of such lethal killer weapons…even IF there is a supposed ban on such weapons being used! We all know how much certain governments like spending money on new ‘lethal force’ technology!
We have seen it in the movies over and over again were Robots decide to turn against their human creators, well if they can think for themselves I’m pretty sure they could one day learn to become the most powerful ‘Beings’ on earth!
A recent piece of research stated that the kind of Aliens we could first bump into in space could be ‘Alien Robots’ who have ‘potentially’ out created their life form creators and can survive the vast distances of space….IF we do indeed end up creating machines that think for themselves could this be D-Day for Humans!?
U.I.P
