ICRAC Members Daniele Amoroso and Guglielmo Taburrini have completed a new ICRAC Working paper #4 on “What makes human control over weapons “Meaningful”? The paper was prepared for distribution at the August 2019 meeting of the United Nations CCW GGE on Lethal Autonomous Weapons. The paper can be downloaded from our Resources Page, along with ICRAC’s other working papers.
Dr. Peter Asaro is a philosopher of science, technology and media. His work examines the interfaces between social relations, human minds and bodies, artificial intelligence and robotics, and digital media.
His current research focuses on the social, cultural, political, legal and ethical dimensions of military robotics and UAV drones, from a perspective that combines media theory with science and technology studies. He has written widely-cited papers on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro's research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, and autonomous vehicles. His research has been published in international peer reviewed journals and edited volumes, and he is currently writing a book that interrogates the intersections between military robotics, interface design practices, and social and ethical issues.
Dr. Asaro has held research positions at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, the HUMlab of Umeå University in Sweden, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. He has also developed technologies in the areas of virtual reality, data visualization and sonification, human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robot vision, and neuromorphic robotics at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and Iguana Robotics, Inc., and was involved in the design of the natural language interface for the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine (winner of the 2010 SXSW Web Interactive Award for Technical Achievement), for Wolfram Research.
He is currently working on an Oral History of Robotics project that is funded by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities.
Dr. Asaro received his PhD in the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also earned a Master of Arts from the Department of Philosophy, and a Master of Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science.
After a month of procedural wrangling, intense lobbying, heavy campaigning and frantic late night negotiations, the Arms Trade Treaty conference came to a frayed inconclusive end last Friday as skeptical states like China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba, joined by the United States, called for more time to complete what they saw as an…
Back in 2015, one week before the second informal meeting of experts at the CCW in Geneva, ICRAC released a leaflet with a succinct list of the ten most pressing issues for global security raised by autonomous weapon systems: LAWS – 10 Problems for Global Security. The original announcement is below, and with the CCW’s 5th Review Conference right…
The short answer is no. But Russia is testing and may deploy at its ICBM bases a lethal mobile system which has “automatic and semi-automatic control modes.” Additionally, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has recently called for “robotic systems that are fully integrated in the command and control system, capable not only to gather intelligence…
Statement on Security in “Open informal consultations on lethal autonomous weapons systems held in accordance with General Assembly resolution 79/62, 12-13 May 2025”. Thank you Chair, Presenters, Delegates, My name is Dr. Matthew Breay Bolton, I am Co-Director of Pace University’s International Disarmament Institute and a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control…
The impressive ‘big dog’ robot by Boston Dynamics was ostensibly designed as a robust mule to carry supplies to the front line without putting soldiers in danger. So why then, have robot grippers been added so that it can throw concrete blocks for some distance? It’s not for shelf stacking – that’s for sure.
ICRAC Statement to the 2017 UN CCW GGE Meeting Delivered by Noel Sharkey, Chair, on 15 November 2017 I speak on behalf of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, a founding member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. We would like to thank Ambassador Gill for his preparations of this important meeting. And…