Shared Concerns, Desire for Human Control Should Spur Regulation
(Washington, DC, October 20, 2020) – A treaty to ban fully autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” is essential and achievable, the International Human Rights Clinic said in a report released today.
The 25-page report, “New Weapons, Proven Precedent: Elements of and Models for a Treaty on Killer Robots,” outlines key elements for a future treaty to maintain meaningful human control over the use of force and prohibit weapons systems that operate without such control. It should consist of both positive obligations and prohibitions as well as elaborate on the components of “meaningful human control.”
“International law was written for humans, not machines, and needs to be strengthened to retain meaningful human control over the use of force,” said Bonnie Docherty, associate director of armed conflict and civilian protection in the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. “A new international treaty is the only effective way to prevent the delegation of life-and-death decisions to machines.”
The report was co-published with Human Rights Watch, for which Docherty is senior arms researcher. HRW coordinates the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
While many countries have voiced support for a new international treaty on fully autonomous weapons, there is some trepidation over how to handle the cutting-edge and rapidly changing nature of these weapons and concern that it will complicate negotiations.
The report seeks to allay these concerns by identifying legal and policy precedent for each of the proposed treaty elements.
“Killer robots present distinctive challenges but constructing a new treaty does not require starting from scratch,” Docherty said. “Existing international law and principles of artificial intelligence provide ample precedent showing that it is legally, politically, and practically possible to develop a new treaty on killer robots.”
Nearly 100 countries have publicly expressed their views on killer robots since 2013, primarily in talks under the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), a major disarmament treaty. The last CCW meeting, in September 2020, looked at how human control and decision-making are critical to the acceptability and legality of weapons systems. During the meeting, many countries and groups of countries expressed their strong interest in negotiating a new international treaty. Thirty countries have explicitly called for a ban on fully autonomous weapons.
A small number of militarily advanced countries – most notably France, India, Israel, The Netherlands, and the United States – have called any move to create a new treaty “premature.” These nations are investing heavily in the military applications of artificial intelligence and developing air, land, and sea-based autonomous weapons systems.
Decisions at the CCW are by consensus, which allows a few countries – or even a single country – to block an agreement sought by a majority. A new treaty, however, does not have to be negotiated under CCW auspices.
More than 60 governments will convene at the next CCW meeting at the United Nations in Geneva from November 2 to 5, the tenth since 2014 on lethal autonomous weapons systems.
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a coalition of more than 160 nongovernmental organizations in 65 countries that is working to pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons and retain meaningful human control over the use of force.
“There’s no time to waste when it comes to preventing development of fully autonomous weapons,” Docherty said. “It’s crucial for governments to begin negotiations and swiftly adopt a new international ban treaty to retain meaningful human control over the use of force.”
Thanks to students Alev Erhan JD’21, Ayako Fujihara JD’21, Daniel Moubayed JD’20, and Shaiba Rather JD’21, who worked on the report under the supervision of Docherty at Harvard Law School.
“New Weapons, Proven Precedent: Elements of and Models for a Treaty on Killer Robots” is available at:
https://hrw.org/node/376648
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on killer robots, please visit: https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/killer-robots
For more information on the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, please visit: http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/