As Experts Push for 'Killer Robot' Ban, UK and US Stand in the Way

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Tuesday, October 06, 2015
by Common Dreams

As Experts Push for 'Killer Robot' Ban, UK and US Stand in the Way

"If there is not a pre-emptive 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."

by Nadia Prupis, staff writer

The U.S. and UK are undermining attempts by the United Nations to negotiate over the future of autonomous weapons—or "killer robots"—talks which, if delayed further, could come too late to prevent so-called "robot wars."

Technology and human rights experts have been pushing for the UN to preemptively ban machines that can kill on the battlefield without human operators, citing a greater risk to civilian life and a broader lack of accountability for military officials. But Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said Tuesday that the negotiation process is in danger of getting "stuck."

"A lot of money is going into development and people will want a return on their investment," Heyns told the Guardian. "If there is not a pre-emptive 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."

As the UN General Assembly negotiates an agreement between nations on autonomous weapons, U.S. and UK representatives are reportedly pushing for weaker rules that would only prohibit future technology, but not killer robots developed during the protracted negotiating period. Such delays would also mean that existing semi-autonomous prototypes—like the Phalanx close-in weapons system (CIWS) in the U.S., the Iron Dome in Israel, and the SGR-1 sentry robot in South Korea—would not be subject to the ban.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/06/experts-push-killer-robot-ban-uk-and-us-stand-way

[DashOneBravo]

1. What could go wrong?

[longship]

2. Somebody is living in a Terminator/Matrix nightmare.

Any advancing technology should be regulated, first loosely, then maybe more tightly.

But let's make this very clear. Some folks have been watching too damned many Hollywood dystopian future dramas.

Of course, I love quirky dystopian movies. One of my favorites is The Quiet Earth, highly recommended.

I just don't think that they are real. Sorry, Professor Hawking.

[DetlefK]

3. This isn't future or fiction. This is present:

Start at 2:20.

Give that thing a machine-gun instead of a toy-gun and it's ready to kill.

[bemildred]

4. We like Killer robots, we hope to sell a lot of them. nt

[Demeter]

5. The purpose of "science fiction" or Speculative Fiction, a more accurate term

for those novels that use hard science and economics, psychology and history to project possible future results of current technological developments, is to explore the ramifications of such advances, and poke holes in the rosy scenarios that the military and politicians like to spin for the public.

The sad part is, such fiction is usually ignored, and its predictions then come to pass.