Throughout the history of war, the machinery of killing has always left room for a human to intervene.
A soldier could see the person in front of them and choose to maim rather than kill; a pilot could identify the target, question the intelligence and decide not to strike.
Technology has been steadily changing that. Autonomous weapons systems now threaten to remove any meaningful human control over the use of force in conflict.
AI-assisted targeting was first deployed by Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza and then in Iran, with strikes happening at unprecedented speed - over 1,000 hits in the first 24 hours of the US-Israeli war, suggesting the use of automated systems.
For more than 13 years, the global coalition Stop Killer Robots has been fighting to prevent that future, pushing governments towards a ban on machines capable of selecting and engaging targets without oversight.
