Has the age of the Robocop and
Terminator arrived? The U.N. thinks it might be around the corner. On Tuesday,
the world body holds its first-ever multinational convention on ‘lethal
autonomous weapons systems’. While fully autonomous weapons don’t really exist
yet, some attendees at the convention—like the coalition of non-governmental organizations
calling itself the ‘Campaign to Stop Killer Robots’—will argue that technology
is moving fast in the direction of creating them. South Korea, for example,
already deploys semi-autonomous machine-gun robots outside its demilitarized
zone with North Korea. The Israeli Defense Forces also operates similar robotic
guns on several of its borders.
Tuesday’s meeting in Geneva is
scheduled as an informal meeting of experts on lethal, autonomous weapon
systems and will take place over three days in Geneva under the framework of
the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, of which 117 states are
members. The convention aims to ban or
restrict conventional weapons considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable
suffering to combatants or civilians. It currently covers things like mines,
booby traps and blinding laser weapons. The meeting will attempt first to help
define what an autonomous weapon is, and whether it fits into the definition
governed under the convention.
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