The proposed agreement would ban autonomous weapons designed to target people and limit where, when, and how other systems can operate.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric called on governments to begin negotiations on a legally binding agreement establishing global autonomous weapons controls.
The two leaders said weapon technology has advanced faster than international rules and warned that the world is getting close to allowing machines to target people without human involvement.
Autonomous weapons can select targets and use force without further human intervention after a person activates them. AI can be used in these systems, but a weapon does not need AI to be autonomous, United Nations officials said.
Proposed controls would ban two types
The proposed rules are intended to prevent autonomous weapons from moving beyond today’s tightly controlled uses.
Current autonomous weapons generally operate:
- For short periods
- Within restricted areas, generally away from civilians
- Against clearly defined military objects
- Under close human supervision
The joint UN-ICRC appeal calls for clear prohibitions and restrictions but does not define their final form. The ICRC has proposed banning autonomous weapons that:
- Target people directly
- Operate in ways that prevent users from adequately anticipating which targets the weapon will attack or what effects it will produce
The ICRC also wants binding limits on what other autonomous weapons may target, where and how long they may operate, and how much force they may use. Human operators would have to supervise the systems and be able to intervene or deactivate them.
November conference could open negotiations
Governments have discussed autonomous weapons for more than a decade but have not started negotiations on a binding international agreement, according to an August 25 United Nations press briefing.
The Seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in November offers governments an opportunity to decide whether to open negotiations. The convention is an international treaty that restricts weapons considered excessively harmful or indiscriminate.
The United Nations and Red Cross described the November meeting as the clearest available path toward a binding agreement. Governments would still have to decide what the rules would cover and how long negotiations would take.
Officials said there is no confirmed evidence that fully autonomous weapons have been used to target people. However, they said increasingly sophisticated weapons are already appearing in conflicts and reducing human control over the use of force.
Guterres and Spoljaric warned that failing to establish clear rules could increase civilian harm and make it harder to determine responsibility when autonomous weapons cause unlawful damage.
