Citing Moral and Legal Void, Rights Groups Demand Preemptive Ban on ‘Killer Robots’

Fully autonomous weapons could allow manufacturers, military to escape liability for wrongful deaths
Nadia Prupis Common Dreams April 9, 2015

A Phalanx close-in weapons system (CIWS), which Human Rights Watch calls a prototype for fully autonomous weapons—or ‘killer robots’—fires at sea. (Photo: U.S. Navy/flickr/cc)
Fully autonomous weapons, or ‘killer robots,’ present a legal and ethical quagmire and must be banned before they can be further developed, a new human rights report published Thursday urges ahead of next week’s United Nations meeting on lethal weapons.
The report, titled Mind the Gap: The Lack of Accountability for Killer Robots, was jointly published by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and outlines the ‘serious moral and legal concerns’ presented by the weapons, which would ‘possess the ability to select and engage their targets without meaningful human control.’
Although fully autonomous weapons do not yet exist, their ‘precursors’ are already in use, such as the Iron Dome in Israel and the Phalanx CIWS in the U.S., the report states.
Under current law, the makers and users of killer robots could get away with unlawful deaths and injuries if the weapons are allowed to develop. Allowing weapons that operate without human control to make decisions about the use of lethal force could lead to violations of international law and make it difficult to hold anyone accountable for those crimes. Moreover, civil liability would be ‘virtually impossible, at least in the United States,’ the report found……….
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