By Emma Farge
GENEVA, Aug 25 (Reuters) – The United Nations’ chief and the head of the Red Cross on Tuesday warned that autonomous weapons that can kill people without human involvement could soon be used in conflicts and called for urgent negotiations to restrict their use.
“We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a joint statement with the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric.
“Negotiations must begin now to urgently adopt a legally binding instrument to regulate autonomous weapon systems with clear prohibitions and restrictions,” they said.
States meet in Geneva next week to discuss potential new rules amid mounting concerns over the role of AI-assisted semi-autonomous weapons that have been used in conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and in Iran and the Gulf.
The discussions, which began in 2014, have made some progress but technology has also advanced.
Fully autonomous weapons are already in use by some armies, such as anti-missile systems on warships, but for now they are not known to have been used against human targets.
Human rights groups also worry that AI-driven systems cannot be adequately predicted or controlled, raising the risk of fatal errors such as a failure to recognise an injured or surrendering soldier. And once such errors occur, it is harder to hold perpetrators to account in any future war crimes cases, they say.
“States must show political courage and move beyond incremental discussions towards decisive action,” the joint statement said, calling for those talks to begin in November when a major review conference that occurs only once every five years is planned in Geneva.
“Some decisions must forever remain with the human being, none more than the decision of taking or not a human life,” Carolyne Mélanie Régimbal, chief of service at the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs, told a Geneva press briefing after the joint statement’s release.
While states agree international humanitarian law (IHL) applies to lethal autonomous weapons systems, specifically binding international standards for such systems remain virtually non-existent.
Russia and the United States, among others, have opposed new legally binding instruments, arguing existing laws are sufficient.
The Geneva talks, which require consensus to lead to formal negotiations, are taking place within a challenging context of geopolitical tensions and recent European withdrawals from the landmine ban treaty, over Russian threats.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Louise Heavens and Kate Mayberry)
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