MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - The UN and a group of non-governmental organisations are calling for international law to regulate AI-driven drones that are reshaping warfare and raising deep ethical questions about autonomy in combat.
As international policymakers scramble to set ground rules, pressure mounts to draft an international regulation of Lethal Autonomous Weapons, or LAWS.
The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs; Human Rights Watch; and Stop Killer Robots, a coalition campaigning for a new international law on autonomy in weapons systems, said a new regulation is necessary to avoid a near-future where machines dictate life-and-death choices.
For several months, the Kherson region of Ukraine has come under sustained attack from weaponized drones operated by the Russian military, principally targeting non-combatants. More than 150 civilians have been killed, and hundreds injured, according to official sources. An independent UN-appointed human rights investigation has concluded that these attacks constitute crimes against humanity.
The Ukrainian army is also heavily reliant on drones and is reportedly developing a 'drone wall' - a defensive line of armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - to protect vulnerable sections of the country's frontiers.
Once the preserve of the wealthiest nations that could afford the most high-tech and expensive UAVs, Ukraine has proved that low-cost drones can be modified to lethal effect. As conflicts around the world mirror this shift, the nature of modern combat is being rewritten, the UN said in a press release.
'The Secretary-General has always said that using machines with fully delegated power, making a decision to take human life is just simply morally repugnant,' says Izumi Nakamitsu, the head of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. It should not be allowed. It should be banned by international law. That's the United Nations position.'
'Several countries with major resources are investing heavily in artificial intelligence and related technologies to develop, land and sea based autonomous weapons systems,' warns Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the Arms Division on Human Rights Watch. 'It's being driven by the United States, but other major countries such as Russia, China, Israel and South Korea, have been investing heavily in autonomous weapons systems.'
Experts cite the risk of letting the machines take over on the battlefield, as the technology is far from foolproof. Also, the UN and many other organisations see the use of LAWS as unethical.
'It's very easy for machines to mistake human targets,' says Wareham of Human Rights Watch. 'People with disabilities are at particular risk because they of the way they move. Their wheelchairs can be mistaken for weapons. There's also concern that facial recognition technology and other biometric measurements are unable to correctly identify people with different skin tones. The AI is still flawed, and it brings with it the biases of the people who programmed those systems.'
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