… To Ban Autonomous Lethal Robots 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…
In the last few years there have been increasing calls for a global regulatory framework to govern robotic weapons. Just yesterday, influential counter-terrorism correspondent Peter Bergen called for a treaty to manage and mitigate drone proliferation. Earlier this year, along with Thomas Nash and Richard Moyes of the advocacy group Article 36, I called for…
In their article “Killer drones: The ‘silver bullet’ of democratic warfare?“, recently published in Security Dialogue, ICRAC’s Niklas Schoernig and Frank Sauer examine some of the questions raised by democracies relying on unmanned systems. The abstract reads as follows: This article sets out to probe the peculiar nexus between democracy and the military use of…
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…
On Tuesday morning, 24 July, the chair of the Diplomatic Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) released his long-awaited draft of an international instrument to regulate the trade in conventional weapons. Unfortunately, as I explain in my commentary piece for Global Policy today, the draft treaty is…well…drafty. There are several major holes in the…
On July 23 2012, the German public radio SWR2 ran a 45-minute discussion on Obama’s drone warfare with ICRAC’s Niklas Schoernig as one of the experts on air. More information for the German speaking visitors of our site, as provided by the SWR2 website: Hinrichtung per Mausklick – Sendung vom Montag, 23.7. | 17.05…
On June 2nd 2012, ICRAC is tagged in a lengthy article by The Economist, with a quote be ICRAC’s Juergen Altmann: Pressure will grow for armies to automate their robots if only so machines can shoot before being shot, says Jürgen Altmann of the Technical University of Dortmund, in Germany, and a founder of the…
Reposted from Robot Futures Two recent events highlight the striking contrast between the Obama administration’s current policy regarding the use of armed drones as part of the U.S. ‘Counterterrorism Strategy,’ and those who challenge that strategy’s legality and morality. The first is the Drone Summit held on April 28-29th in Washington, D.C., co-organized by activist group CodePink,…
A report released by US Central Command on 22 March 2012 – an excerpt of 5 pages can be found here – contains interesting and unsettling insights into the targeting practice of drone pilots, with one Captain supposed to act as a safety observer noting the “Top Gun” mentality of some drone pilots, and Predator…
This video released by DARPA, the far-out Pentagon’s research agency, shows “Cheetah” breaking the speed record for legged robots. Cheetah is made by Boston Dynamics, the company that developed BigDog, AlphaDog, and PETMAN. This is what ICRAC’s Noel Sharkey has to say about it on the BBC website: “With faster than human speed, this is…