NEWS
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Campaign to Stop Killer Robots takes significant step forward at UN
ICRAC welcomes the historic decision taken by nations to begin international discussions on how to address the challenges posed by fully autonomous weapons. The agreement marks the beginning of a process that the campaign believes should lead to an international ban on these weapons to ensure there will always be meaningful human control over targeting decisions…
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ICRAC Delivers Statement to States Parties to the Convention on Conventional Weapons at the UN in Geneva
International Community Must Act Now to Ensure Combat Will Never Be Outsourced to “Killer Robots”! — I am speaking on behalf of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), a founding NGO member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Since its establishment in 2009, ICRAC has urged the international community to discuss the…
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News Roundup: Banning Lethal Autonomous Robots
Over the last couple of months, lethal autonomous robots (LARs) went from a sidelined issue to not only a hotly and widely debated topic but most importantly an official item of United Nations (UN) arms control diplomacy. This post provides an overview over recent media coverage as well as events and statements given at the UN. The…
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ICRAC Member and Campaign to Stop Killer Robots Deliver Statements at the UN General Assembly First Committee
On behalf of global civil society organizations, International Committee for Robot Arms Control member Matthew Bolton calls for disarmament and arms control “driven by the needs and rights of people most affected by armed violence.” The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots also spoke, calling for fully autonomous weapons to “be prohibited through an international treaty,…
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Computing experts from 37 countries call for ban on killer robots
Decision to apply violent force must not be delegated to machines! More than 270 engineers, computing and artificial intelligence experts, roboticists, and professionals from related disciplines are calling for a ban on the development and deployment of weapon systems that make the decision to apply violent force autonomously, without any human control. In a statement…
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A meme is born: autonomous = secure
One of Joshua Foust’s assertions in his debate with Heather Roff was that making weapons autonomous was necessary in order to secure them against the threat of hacking. I posted a response after Foustreiterated this surprising argument, and provided a few scraps of pseudo-evidence to support it, in an article which seems to have gone semi-viral on the internet–launching what seems…
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ICRAC’s Heather Roff debates Joshua Foust
Naval Postgraduate School CRUSER Robo-Ethics Continuing Education Series (RECES) Robo-Ethics Panelist Debate (Part 3)
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US killer robot policy: Full speed ahead
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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Everyone is a target
A new short documentary (8 minutes) by Amy Kohn – Autonomous Weapons: everyone is a target – features members of ICRAC giving the reason why we need to move forward with an international legally binding treaty to prohibit research, use and development of autonomous weapons – weapons that once activated can select targets and kill…
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ICRAC Working Paper Series launched
Today, ICRAC launches its new series of working papers. In ICRAC Working Paper #2 (#1 is to follow suit in the near future), Mark Gubrud and Juergen Altmann present “Compliance Measures for an Autonomous Weapons Convention”, inter alia containing a first conceptual sketch about how to implement technical verification measures to ensure human control and…