United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an end to autonomous weapons of warfare that could be turned against civilian populations.
“Machines selecting and engaging their target and taking a life — without human control and judgment. That is morally repugnant,” Guterres said. “Let us call them what they are: killer robots.”
Pope Leo XIV earlier this year also warned of artificial-intelligence (AI) weaponry and combat reliance on AI. He feared that AI could make combat more palatable for those in charge.
Anthropic is currently in a legal war with the Pentagon over the use of its AI tools for warfare and/or domestic surveillance. The Pentagon basically rejected Anthropic’s conditions, countering that it would use AI for any legal purpose it saw fit. Which no doubt means in warfare. The two are still locked in a court battle.
Drones were not brought up in any of these discussions, evidently because they’re here to stay as a weapon of warfare. Drones, of course, rely on semiconductor chips and AI to find their targets, along with human help.
Actually, if war came down to robots fighting robots with no civilians threatened, that could be a plus. But that’s unlikely. If one nation won a robot-only confrontation, what then? No land will necessarily have been won, nor opposing leaders toppled. Just robots lying dead somewhere on a battlefield.
Video games and apps almost all feature robot battles. Are they portraying a realistic vision of our future?
