The UN has failed to ban autonomous weapons systems that can kill people with no human control. CNBC. 125 nations had supported banning those weapons but the effort failed due to nations like Russia and the United States vetoing the measure. However, these weapons are already in use. Turkey has developed Kargu drones which have seen use against the Kurds in Turkey as well as being used in Libya. These drones would be useful for assassinations and may have difficulty excluding civilians from attacks.
My Comment:
As expected the UN has again failed to be useful at all. The problem is that just a few countries can overrule the rest. It's clear that a lot of people are worried about autonomous weapons systems that can act without human intervention, but because a few nations actually want these weapons, they aren't going to go away.
The fear from these drones is not a skynet style rise of the machines. That scenario isn't going to be a threat anytime soon. These drones are not that advanced. The Kargu drone, for example, is just a kamikaze drone that looks like it would be at home in someone's hobby shop. It's not a threat to take over the world.
But there are good reasons to be distrustful of this technology. For one thing, these drones could very easily target the wrong thing. They could accidently make the wrong choice and target civilians. To be fair, humans make the same mistakes but at least then a human can be held accountable. With no human control once the drones are released it's very possible they will make the wrong choice.
What worries me though is the obvious use these weapons could have for terrorism. The drones themselves are not that advanced but if the programing were to leak it would be a new era in terrorism and assassination. If a drone had facial recognition, for example, it could be programed to target politicians and other people that terrorists want dead. Plus it would mean that unlike traditional attacks, the terrorists would be at significant lower risk. It is fire and forget technology and that is a scary thing when it comes to terrorists.
Given that ISIS has used drones in attacks before it is clear that they could use these kinds of drones in further attacks. The ISIS drone attacks in Syria were fairly primitive, essentially drones with grenades attached to them that drop on command, but they were effective. If those drones were autonomous they would be even deadlier.
I don't think these weapons are going to go away anytime soon. What is needed is countermeasures against these drones. Traditional anti-air weapons don't work on aircraft to small and I wouldn't even begin to guess what you do with a ground vehicle that thinks on its own. Perhaps energy weapons would be effective? Regardless, something needs to be done to counter these weapons.
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