Context
For the first time, a majority of the 125 nations that belong to an agreement called the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons said they wanted curbs on killer robots.
About
- Autonomous weapon systems – commonly known as killer robots means drones, guns and bombs that decide on their own, with artificial brains, whether to attack and kill.
- These systems are robots with lethal weapons that can operate independently, selecting and attacking targets without a human weighing in on those decisions.
- Militaries around the world are investing heavily in autonomous weapons research and development.
- The U.S. alone budgeted US$18 billion for autonomous weapons between 2016 and 2020.
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)
- Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons or CCW, is also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention.
- Purpose: To ban or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately.
- The Convention including three annexed protocols was adopted on 10 October 1980 and opened for signature on 10 April 1981 for the duration of one year. A total of 50 States signed the Convention, which entered into force on 2 December 1983.
Issues with autonomous weapons
- misidentification
- undermine humanity’s final stopgap against war crimes and atrocities
- lack of accountability
- legal and moral challenge
- Shifting blame game
- The problems of low-end and high-end proliferation (autonomous weapons could get into the hands of people outside of government control, including international and domestic terrorists)
