BAN THE KILLER ROBOTS!

Rights org vs. A.I. weapons

Abort! Abort!

Artificial intelligence taking over the world is more than just a science-fiction trope, says the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch.

The group has launched the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which calls for a global ban on “fully autonomous weapons.”

“Removing human control from the use of force is now widely regarded as a grave threat to humanity that, like climate change, deserves urgent multilateral action,” said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch.

The organization is pushing for “an international ban treaty” on A.I.-operated weapons. Or, in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unstoppable cyborg character, the Terminator: Hasta la vista, baby.

Creating machines to decide what targets to hit or when to fire, the group argues, could lead to the kind of robot-dominated future that the “Terminator” films and the film-turned-TV series “Westworld” have warned against.

Still, the Stop Killer Robots report, which analyzed defense policies from 97 countries that have outlined stances on lethal robotics, revealed that most lawmakers believe that human intervention is fundamental to ethical weapons systems.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called the advanced programs “morally repugnant and politically unacceptable,” and has urged countries to take action.

The report asserts that autonomous weapons “would decide who lives and dies, without . . inherently human characteristics, such as compassion, that are necessary to make complex ethical choices.”

Aside from many other potential pitfalls of programming death machines, Stop Killer Robots suggests their use would also create confusion over who would be held responsible for war crimes committed by an autonomous weapon: the computer programmers or the military commanders.

So far, at least 30 countries, including Austria, Brazil and Chile, support a global ban on the use of the weapons, the report says.

However, it adds, influential countries — including the United States and Russia — have hampered talks, while notably “investing heavily in the development of various autonomous weapons systems.”