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GENEVA: The United Nations and the Red Cross warned on Tuesday that the world is “dangerously close” to a future where so-called “killer robots” could target humans, and issued an urgent appeal for international regulation of autonomous weapons.
The warning follows a 2023 call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for specific bans and restrictions on the rapidly-developing technology by this year.
“Today, we renew this call with even greater urgency,” they said in a joint statement, adding that while their “fundamental concerns remain unchanged the risks have intensified”.
“We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines,” they warned. Lethal autonomous weapon systems are generally understood as weapon systems that select targets and apply force without human intervention.
