Lethal Autonomous weapons (LAWS) are weapons that designed to find as well as engage targets on the basis of descriptions and constraints. Popularly known as killer robots, robotic weapons of lethal autonomous robots, these weapons are drawing in a lot of debate and opposition regarding the use of them in warfare.
While the UN is yet to decide on banning such weaponry, big fishes like Tesla head honcho Elon Musk as well as Mustafa Suleyman of Deepmind’s, known to be pioneering in the field of artificial intelligence have already shown their concern and opposition against the same in an open letter submitted to UN. Elon Musk has not done this the first time. In 2015 he was joined by business magnates like Steve Wozniak, Noam Chomsky and Steven Hawking to express their opposition for the global arms race.
The oldest example of automatic defensive systems are the landmines, who have been in use since the 1600’s. The continuous research and development process in the field has given birth to innovative autonomous weaponry that is beyond the active protection systems or defensive systems have been there since the 1970s. They are installed on ships and guided by radars and have the ability to make autonomous decisions of defense once they detect any incoming missiles, rockets or more. The automatic offensive systems are more complex as far as automation is concerned and include unmanned combat vehicles, drones and more. One example of the same are the killer robots or slaughter bots released in the year November 2017. A recent fury around autonomous weapons garnered a lot of eyeballs when Korea advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced about opening a AI weapons laboratory in association with a leading arms company. AI researchers in the leadership of Toby Walsh, an AI researcher organized an academic boycott of the university on which the university agreed on not indulging into any research activities that autonomous weapons without meaningful human control.
This was followed by umpteen people joining the bandwagon against LAW including senior engineers and over 3000 google workforce. Though most of the nations did agree that human control was a necessity for autonomous weapons, there are 26 nations that explicitly endorse the call to ban LAWS. Inspite of meetings, still the decision for law making around autonomous weaponry is pending but is sure getting momentum, the advocates believe that the UN needs to expedite the process on the same.
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