Killer Robots are Coming

Different sectors of the society are looking into the use of artificial intelligence as a key component for improvement and positive change. Good examples are oil and gas companies turning to artificial intelligence to cut costs and increase productivity and telecommunications companies incorporating artificial intelligence to make systems automated and standardized. Artificial intelligence is seen as a game changer and an indispensable feature of the future. However, there are also concerns regarding the threats that it poses to earth and its people.

At the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) held in Geneva on April 11 to 15, 2016, different state parties and representatives of the Human Rights Watch, a non-profit international organization that is known to perform studies germane to the development of the society and a human rights group that supports different advocacies, brought up the issue concerning the development of “killer robots.”

Officially called “lethal autonomous weapons systems,” these “killer robots” are weapons equipped with a different level of artificial intelligence as they are able to engage targets and make life-and-death determinations without meaningful human control. Artificial intelligence experts predict that the creation of such robots capable of surpassing the abilities of humans may come soon. The famous AlphaGo already exists, and robots that have deep learning abilities are being developed in countries with high-tech militaries.

During the said convention, experts and human rights advocates highlighted the importance of maintaining meaningful human control over critical functions of weapons with artificial intelligence. They emphasized that human control should not only be over the overall outcomes of operations but over every individual attack made by any machine.

As a way to maintain meaningful human control over lethal weapons with artificial intelligence, the creation of an international law that will mandate human control over the new class of weapons that may be created in the future was discussed during the convention. It is proposed that the law should prohibit the use of fully autonomous weapons, and that humans should remain in control of every weapon used, regardless of it being a device with artificial intelligence or a simple lethal weapon.

This year’s convention on lethal autonomous weapon systems is the third of its kind. It was first held on May 13 to 16, 2014. The second one was held on April 13 to 15, 2015. The same agenda—the emergence of a new kind of weapon that may be a threat to the human populace, is discussed every year.