{"id":132967,"date":"2021-12-23T23:22:22","date_gmt":"2021-12-24T07:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/un-fails-to-agree-on-killer-robot-ban-as-nations-pour-billions-into-autonomous-weapons-research"},"modified":"2021-12-23T23:22:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T07:22:22","slug":"un-fails-to-agree-on-killer-robot-ban-as-nations-pour-billions-into-autonomous-weapons-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/un-fails-to-agree-on-killer-robot-ban-as-nations-pour-billions-into-autonomous-weapons-research","title":{"rendered":"UN fails to agree on \u2018killer robot\u2019 ban as nations pour billions into autonomous weapons research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fPqmC16ewYg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Autonomous weapon systems\u2014commonly known as killer robots\u2014may have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2021\/06\/01\/1002196245\/a-u-n-report-suggests-libya-saw-the-first-battlefield-killing-by-an-autonomous-d\">killed human beings for the first time ever<\/a> last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council <a href=\"https:\/\/undocs.org\/S\/2021\/229\">report on the Libyan civil war<\/a>. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity\u2019s final one.<\/p>\n<p>The United Nations <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/disarmament\/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons\/\">Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons<\/a> debated the question of banning <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/autonomous+weapons\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">autonomous weapons<\/a> at its once-every-five-years review meeting in Geneva Dec. 13\u201317, 2021, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-un-disarmament-idAFKBN2IW1UJ\">didn\u2019t reach consensus on a ban<\/a>. Established in 1983, the convention has been updated regularly to restrict some of the world\u2019s cruelest conventional weapons, including land mines, booby traps and incendiary weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Autonomous weapon systems are robots with lethal weapons that can operate independently, selecting and attacking targets without a human weighing in on those decisions. Militaries around the world are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2021\/09\/24\/us-only-nation-ethical-standards-ai-weapons-should-we-afraid-1628986.html\">investing heavily<\/a> in autonomous weapons research and development. The U.S. alone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/dont-let-robots-pull-the-trigger\/\">budgeted US$18 billion<\/a> for autonomous weapons between 2016 and 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autonomous weapon systems\u2014commonly known as killer robots\u2014may have killed human beings for the first time ever last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council report on the Libyan civil war. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}