Weapons

Why the world needs to regulate autonomous weapons, and soon

The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) at the UN has just concluded a second round of meetings on lethal autonomous weapons systems in Geneva, under the auspices of what is known as a Group of Governmental Experts. Both the urgency and significance of the discussions in that forum have been heightened by the rising concerns over artificial intelligence (AI) arms races and the increasing use of digital technologies to subvert democratic processes. Some observers have expressed concerns that the CCW discussions might be hopeless or futile, and that no consensus is emerging from them. Those concerns miss the significance of what has already happened and the opportunities going forward.

For some observers, the concerns over an AI arms race have overshadowed concerns about autonomous weapons. Some have even characterized the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots as aiming to “ban artificial intelligence” itself. I do not agree with these views, and argue in a forthcoming paper for I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society that various scholars and media use the term “AI arms race” to mean very different and even incompatible things, ranging from economic competition, to automated cyberwarfare, to embedding AI in weapons.