Technology should be used to empower all people, not to reduce us – to stereotypes, labels, objects, or just a pattern of 1’s and 0’s.
With growing digital dehumanisation, the Stop Killer Robots coalition works to ensure human control in the use of force. Our campaign calls for new international law on autonomy in weapons systems.
Machines don’t see us as people, just another piece of code to be processed and sorted. From smart homes to the use of robot dogs by police enforcement, A.I. technologies and automated decision-making are now playing a significant role in our lives. At the extreme end of the spectrum of automation lie killer robots.
Killer robots don’t just appear – we create them. If we allow this dehumanisation we will struggle to protect ourselves from machine decision-making in other areas of our lives. We need to prohibit autonomous weapons systems that would be used against people, to prevent this slide to digital dehumanisation.
Tech like facial recognition favours light-skinned and outwardly masculine faces over darker-skinned and outwardly feminine faces. And, while efforts will be made to diversify data sets, this is not just a case of unrepresentative data. A.I. technologies are reinforcing existing institutional patterns of discrimination. Stereotypes are entrenched by automated decision-making.
New law is needed on autonomy in weapons systems to create boundaries between what is acceptable and unacceptable. This is fundamental to preventing digital dehumanisation and further cycles of oppression and violence. We should be challenging structures of inequality, not embedding them into weapons.
Whether on the battlefield or at a protest, machines cannot make complex ethical choices, they cannot comprehend the value of human life. Machines don’t understand contexts or consequences: understanding is a human capability – and without that understanding we lose moral engagement and we undermine existing legal rules.
Ensuring meaningful human control means understanding the technologies we use, understanding where we are using them, and being fully engaged with the consequences of our actions. Life and death decisions should not be delegated to a machine. It’s time for new international law to regulate these technologies.
Immoral Code is a film that contemplates the impact of Killer Robots in an increasingly automated world- one where machines make decisions over who to kill or what to destroy. It examines if there are situations where it’s morally acceptable to take life, and - would a computer know the difference?
The second meeting of 2025 of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Autonomous Weapons concludes with a crucial show of political will to move toward legal safeguards against automated killing
On 18 March the ceasefire in Gaza was broken with a new wave of airstrikes by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Stop Killer Robots is gravely concerned by this resumption of attacks, and supports calls for an immediate and enduring ceasefire, as well as the end to all violations – noting, among other developments, the […]
On 12 and 13 May, open informal consultations on the issue of autonomous weapons systems, mandated by UN General Assembly Resolution 79/62, will be held at the UN in New York. These consultations will examine the topics raised in the UN Secretary-General’s 2024 report. This report gathered states’ and other...
The Stop Killer Robots campaign welcomed the opportunity to submit our views to the United Nations Secretary-General in response to Resolution 78/241, which requests the Secretary-General to seek the views of Member States and observer States on lethal autonomous weapons systems, inter alia, on ways to address the related challenges...
A resolution on Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) will be tabled at the First Committee of the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in October 2023. The resolution requests the United Nations Secretary-General to seek the views of states and stakeholders on addressing the legal, ethical, humanitarian, and security...
The First Committee session of the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly(UNGA) in October 2023 provides a crucial opportunity for progress. After 10 years of international discussions without concrete outcomes within the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), a resolution will be tabled at the First Committee calling...
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