WHEN Hollywood invented the Terminator - a killer robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger - it was pure science fiction. But now, France is calling for an international ban on developing exactly that: fully-autonomous killing machines. On Friday, nations will vote on whether to consider imposing a ban, at the annual Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva, says
Sky News. How real is the prospect of a self-guiding robot attacking human targets with lethal force?
Who is developing autonomous military robots? The US, UK, Israel and South Korea are all already flying armed drones with some degree of autonomy. On the ground, the US is developing battlefield robots including the remarkable
Big Dog - though there is no indication they would ever be weaponised. According to the
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots: "Several nations with high-tech militaries, including China, Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are moving toward systems that would give greater combat autonomy to machines."
Who is campaigning against them? A group of 44 NGOs including Human Rights Watch has banded together under the banner of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots to lobby governments to impose a ban on developing such weapons. Now France, in its role as chair of the CCW, will ask nations to consider
a ban.
What exactly do the French want to ban? Sky reports that France is calling for a ban on the development of "any fully autonomous weapon that could select and fire on targets without human intervention". While an Arnie-shaped murderous robot is a real future possibility, opponents of the systems are more immediately concerned by the drones already hovering overhead - it would be a small step to allow them to select and attack their own targets. Friday's vote will not see the robots stopped in their tracks, however - it is only to decide whether weapons of this kind should fall under the CCW's mandate, paving the way for a future debate on a ban.
Would a ban really work? Professor Noel Sharkey of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) told
The Times: "It is possible to prevent the development and proliferation of autonomous robot weapons, but only if we act now before there is too much investment." He pointed to an example set in 1995 when the CCW banned the development of lasers intended to blind enemy combatants. · For further concise, balanced comment and analysis on the week's news, try The Week magazine.
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