November 14, 2017
We’re Losing Our Chance to Regulate Killer Robots
Scores of countries are gathering at the United Nations this week to discuss lethal autonomous weapon systems – essentially, robots that would pick their own targets. This marks their fourth year of debate with little to show for it; the group does not even have a shared working definition of “autonomous weapon.” Meanwhile, the technology of autonomy and artificial intelligence is racing forward.
When the countries last met, in April 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGohad just beaten world champion Go player Lee Sedol in a head-to-head match — an unprecedented feat for a computer. But just a few weeks ago, DeepMind published a paper on its new AlphaGo Zero, which taught itself the game without human-supplied training data and, after a mere three days of self-play, defeated the older program in 100 straight games. Between those two events, the world’s countries held no substantive meetings on autonomous weapons — excepting only last year’s decision to bump the discussions up one rank in the diplomatic hierarchy.
A consortium of over 60 non-governmental organizations has called for an urgent ban on the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons, seeking to halt such work before it begins in earnest. Yet at this stage a legally binding treaty is almost inconceivable. The UN forum that the nations are using, the awkwardly named Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, operates by consensus — meaning that although 19 nations have said they would back a ban, any one of the other 105 can veto it. Even advocates of a ban agree that the diplomatic process is “faltering financially, losing focus [and] lacks a goal.”
Read the full op-ed in Defense One.
More from CNAS
-
Artificial Intelligence and Arms Control
Reports
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) pose immense opportunity for militaries around the world. With this rising potential for AI-enabled military systems, some activists a...
By Paul Scharre & Megan Lamberth
-
Principles for the Combat Employment of Weapon Systems with Autonomous Functionalities
Reports
These seven new principles concentrate on the responsible use of autonomous functionalities in armed conflict in ways that preserve human judgment and responsibility over the ...
By Robert O. Work
-
Are ‘killer robots’ the future of warfare?
Podcast
Paul Scharre joins host Suzanna Kianpour to discuss the technology, fears and even potential advantages of developing autonomous weapons. Listen to the full conversation from...
By Paul Scharre
-
Episode 26 - Paul Scharre
What are autonomous weapons systems? How are they used in modern warfare? And how do we strengthen international cooperation? In this episode, the Director of the Technology a...
By Paul Scharre
