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Opinion Posts by Members of ICRAC

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Unpriming the pump: Remystifications of AI at the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
ByLucy Suchman April 8, 2018September 26, 2018

*Originally published on the “Robot Futures Blog” In the lead up to the next meeting of the CCW’s Group of Governmental Experts at the United Nations April 9-13th in Geneva, the UN’s Institute for Disarmament Research has issued a briefing paper titled The Weaponization of Increasingly Autonomous Technologies: Artificial Intelligence. Designated a primer for CCW…

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Arms Control for AWS: 2016 and beyond
ByFrank Sauer December 7, 2016October 1, 2018

After three informal meetings of experts, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, during its Fifth Review Conference taking place from 12 to 16 December 2016 in Geneva, will decide on how to continue work on arms control for autonomous weapon systems. Below is a preview to an article published in the October 2016 issue of Arms Control…

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US killer robot policy: Full speed ahead
ByMark Gubrud September 22, 2013January 19, 2018

In November 2012, United States Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signed directive 3000.09, establishing policy for the “design, development, acquisition, testing, fielding, and … application of lethal or non-lethal, kinetic or non-kinetic, force by autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon systems.” Without fanfare, the world had its first openly declared national policy for killer robots. The policy has…

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The Role of ICRAC in the Arms Trade Treaty Negotiations
Bymbolton April 9, 2013October 1, 2018

Last week the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to adopt the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which will aim to constrain the flow of conventional weapons to states and organizations that threaten peace and security or engage in gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law. Several members of the International Committee for Robot Arms…

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Arms Control for Uninhabited Vehicles: A Detailed Study
Byaltmann April 2, 2013June 8, 2016

In a detailed scientific article just published online, physicist and peace researcher Jürgen Altmann (TU Dortmund, Germany) explains that armed uninhabited vehicles (on land, on/under water, in the air) do not exist in a legal vacuum. For example, they must not be equipped with biological or chemical weapons. In Europe most land and air…

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Smart Robots? Perhaps not smart enough to be called stupid.
Bynsharkey March 18, 2013July 3, 2013

The New York Times has entered the discussion about the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Columnist Bill Keller has produced a well balanced article that looks at the pros and cons of a ban. For the ban, he notes that The arguments against developing fully autonomous weapons, as they are called, range from moral (“they…

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