Killer Robots Could be Banned by the UN before 2016

Killer robots could be banned by 2016 after the UN’s Convention on Conventional Weapons agreed to add them to its agenda for next year.

Campaigners have successfully lobbied the United Nation’s CCW to start discussions on whether countries should be allowed to develop and deploy fully autonomous weapons, which would be able to make tactical military decisions on the use of force without human intervention.

Unmanned combat air vehicle Taranis (Credit: BAE Systems)

The CCW said in Geneva on Friday that it was adding concerns about the technology, which has not yet been fully developed, to its agenda for next year.

Thomas Nash, director of nonprofit Article 36, which works to prevent unnecessary or unacceptable harm by certain weapons, told Forbes that the UN’s decision was “very significant” and could lead to a ban on killer robots by 2016.

“The Convention doesn’t often add concerns to its agenda and when it does, this usually results in new international rules, either developed within the convention or alongside it,” he said.

“UN discussions can often move slowly, but the speed at which this topic has gotten on the agenda is quite remarkable. We would say that a year to discuss the topic, including a four-day intensive expert meeting in Geneva, should be enough to move to negotiations in 2015 and there’s no good reason why those negotiations should take longer than a year...

Read the rest on Forbes