UN delay in deadly robot ban could lead to extreme robot wars

The process of the UN Treaty on lethal autonomous weapons may get stuck somewhere.

The United Nations has been warned over the delay in negotiations pertaining to the autonomous lethal weapons of the future. Speculation rose that this delay may lead to failure to stop deadly robot wars from taking place. 

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - At the U.N. General Assembly in New York, the fight for a preemptive ban on killer robots has built up. However, it seems the deal may not happen in time to prevent such devices from being utilized.

According to U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, the possibility and risk of the process is getting stuck somewhere.

"A lot of money is going into development and people will want a return on their investment [and] if there is not a preemptive ban on the high-level autonomous weapons, then once the genie is out of the bottle it will be extremely difficult to get it back in." The robotics industry worldwide continues to grow exponentially, and is now worth $30 billion. 

Observers believe the U.S. and U.K. are trying to strip the agreement of conditions, in favor of a ban that only includes emerging technologies. The disagreement has increased the level of urgency among U.N. member states. 

According to University of Sheffield robotics and artificial intelligence professor, Noel Sharkey, China wanted to talk about emerging and existing technologies, but the wording insisted on by the U.S. and the U.K. is that discussions are only to be about "emerging technologies.'"

"The U.K. and U.S. are both insisting that the wording for any mandate about autonomous weapons should discuss only emerging technologies," explained Sharkey. "Ostensibly this is because there is concern that we will want to ban some of their current defensive weapons like the Phalanx or the Iron Dome." 

"However, if the discussions go on for several years as they seem to be doing, many of the weapons that we are concerned about will already have been developed and potentially used," continued Sharkey, who is also the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, a group of robotics experts who advocate against the military use of robots. 

There are currently no fully autonomous weapons in use, but there are several semi-autonomous lethal precursors already in development. An example of this is South Korea's sentry robot, SGR-1, which guards the country's border with North Korea, and detects intruders through light and heat sensors. Although robots are being controlled by humans from a distance, they are capable of making a decision to kill someone, even without human intervention. 

Heyns expressed that the U.N. should make the important step of banning certain lethal autonomous weapons. There are currently only five countries that have backed a ban, with the U.S., U.K., and France debating that a human will always have the "meaningful control" over a robot's decision to kill. 

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