Sophia Sabeh is AIUSA’s Military, Security, and Police Transfers (MSP) Thematic Specialist
Killer robots, capable of making their own decisions about who survives and who dies violently, may sound like something from a sci-fi horror movie, but they are already a reality.
Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) are defined by their ability to strike using a sensor-based targeting system instead of human input. These systems—like drones, vehicles, and robots—are capable of selecting and attacking people without meaningful human control or intervention. New technologies based on varying degrees of autonomy are spreading through military, security and policing functions rapidly.
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), machines that can make life-or-death decisions, sit at the heart of this debate. They pose a direct challenge to the cornerstones of the human rights system: the right to life and human dignity, as well as accountability for the most consequential decisions a military or police officer can make.
The United Nations Consultations on Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS)
Experts are gathering from May 12 to 13 at the United Nations in New York to consider if and how to move forward on treaty negotiations on these weapons systems. Despite broad global support for a legally binding treaty on autonomous weapons systems, treaty negotiations have yet to begin.
All states can and should engage in these consultations to call for international human rights law standards. They should especially advocate consideration of the implications of autonomous weapons systems outside of armed conflict, such as in law enforcement. These discussions could produce a draft text to serve as a foundation for treaty negotiations. Experts, signatories, and contracting treaty parties must hear from the broader international community.
Autonomous weapons systems raise fundamental human rights concerns.
The direct application of force against humans using killer robots poses unacceptable legal and ethical risks. Other systems, such as existing missile defense systems and loitering munitions, may not intrinsically lack meaningful human control over targeting and use of force decisions, but they must be regulated to ensure their operational parameters are sufficiently constrained and humans can reliably predict outcomes of the use of force.
There are also concerns about the potential future use of AWS in law enforcement. The use of AWS in law enforcement threatens the rights to life, liberty and security of person; the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. The use of AWS—whether lethal or less lethal—undermines the principles of human rights-compliant law enforcement, which relies on close, positive and proactive human relationships between law enforcement officers and the public they serve.
Amnesty International advocates for a full prohibition of anti-personnel AWS/LAWS because:
- Algorithms that categorize human beings are biased by training data, risking discriminatory practices.
- Using automated, sensor-based systems to kill people reduces them to objects and is inherently dehumanizing.
- International humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law (IHRL), and international criminal law (ICL) all require the decision to take a life or deliberately injure a person to be made by a human being who is accountable for that decision.
The use of AWS to directly apply force against humans can never comply with international human rights law and humanitarian law. It threatens the rights to life and bodily integrity, freedom from discrimination, and privacy.
It is even more dangerous if these weapons are made or used before laws and regulations are clear. Regulating a technology after it is widely adopted cannot be as effective as setting clear parameters in advance. Creating and enforcing human rights-compliant limits after the wide proliferation and normalization of these kinds of weapons will be politically, if not practically, impossible. We must ensure clear prohibitions are in place before it is too late. A global, legally binding treaty is urgently needed to regulate the development and deployment of AWS.