‘Killer robots’ to provide ‘accountability gap’ for military, must be banned – HRW
Future use of fully autonomous weapons or ‘killer robots’ may provide a loophole for the military to escape responsibility for unlawfully killing or injuring civilians, a report by Human Rights Watch says.
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There are significant obstacles to assigning personal
accountability for the actions performed by fully autonomous
weapons under both criminal and civil law, a paper, entitled Mind the Gap: The Lack of
Accountability for Killer Robots, stated.
The 38-page document is jointly published by Human Rights Watch
(HRW) and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic.
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‘Killer robots’ are still something from science-fiction, but
their possible development in the future “raises serious
moral and legal concerns because they would possess the ability
to select and engage their targets without meaningful human
control,” the report said.
“There are also grave doubts that fully autonomous weapons
would ever be able to replicate human judgment and comply with
the legal requirement to distinguish civilian from military
targets,” it added.
The authors of the paper also warned of “the prospect of an
arms race and proliferation to armed forces with little regard
for the law” due to the rise of by fully autonomous military
hardware.
With ‘killer robots’ being unable to substitute responsible
humans in court, it is likely that people behind their use,
including military commanders, programmers and developers, would
escape liability for crimes committed by machines, the report
said.
“No accountability means no deterrence of future crimes, no
retribution for victims, no social condemnation of the
responsible party,” Bonnie Docherty, senior Arms Division
researcher at HRW and the report’s lead author, told HRW’s
website. “The many obstacles to justice for potential victims
show why we urgently need to ban fully autonomous weapons.”
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According to the human rights watchdog, the military officials
could be found guilty if they intentionally deployed a machine to
commit a crime, but they would most certainly escape justice in
cases when they couldn’t foresee the unlawful actions by the
‘killer robot.’
“A fully autonomous weapon could commit acts that would rise
to the level of war crimes if a person carried them out, but
victims would see no one punished for these crimes. Calling such
acts an ‘accident’ or ‘glitch’ would trivialize the deadly harm
they could cause,” Docherty stressed.
In order to deal with the “accountability gap,” which
would come in case of use of autonomous, the authors of the
report recommend to “prohibit the development, production and
use of fully autonomous weapons through an international legally
binding instrument” and come up with national laws promoting
the ban.
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Over 50 NGOs from around the globe are pushing for a preemptive
ban on the development, production, and use of fully autonomous
weapons, with HRW being co-founder and coordinator of the
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
The report was put together ahead of a major international
meeting on ‘lethal autonomous weapons systems’ (LAWS) at the UN
in Geneva on April 13–17, and will be distributed during the
event. The session will discuss additions to the Convention on
Certain Conventional Weapons. The treaty has already banned
several emerging forms of military technology: blinding lasers
were blacklisted in 1995, while in 2006 warring parties were
required to remove unexploded cluster bombs.
“Fully autonomous weapons do not yet exist,” the report
admits. “But technology is moving in their direction, and
precursors are already in use or development. For example, many
countries use weapons defense systems – such as the Israeli Iron
Dome and the US Phalanx and C-RAM – that are programmed to
respond automatically to threats from incoming
munitions.”
Prototypes exist for planes that could autonomously fly on intercontinental missions, such as the UK’s Taranis, or take off and land on an aircraft carrier, like the US’s X-47B. Drones, despite being a powerful military means, are also contributing to controversies though they are directed by live operators from distance.
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