- UN secretary-general calls for global ban on autonomous ‘killer robots’
- Guterres says delegating life and death decisions to machines is ‘morally repugnant’
- Governments should take a stand now – without waiting for something catastrophic to happen
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for lethal autonomous weapons, which he describes as “killer robots”, to be banned under international law following recent discussions at the first Global Dialogue on the Governance of Artificial Intelligence in Geneva.
Guterres’ call to ban these weapons focuses on those capable of identifying, selecting and attacking targets without human oversight, leaving artificial intelligence and other computer systems responsible for a life-or-death decision.
He ultimately argued that some decisions must remain exclusively human, and that the decision to end a life lies well at the edge of the need for human oversight. Transferring decision-making power to killer robots would be “morally repugnant” and “politically unacceptable,” he argued.
AI requires global regulation as military AI poses a major threat
The secretary general’s key argument is that he is urging governments to act and ban these robots now, rather than waiting for an autonomous weapon to cause a major incident before rethinking their strategies.
“Let us not wait for atrocities to act,” said Guterres. “Some decisions must remain human forever – the only one being to take a human life. »
The problem becomes more pressing now that AI models and advanced chips are already used in military intelligence, targeting and other battlefield systems.
More broadly, Guterres’ thoughts align with those of Anthropic, which recently had a dispute with the Pentagon after seeking assurances that its models would not be used for autonomous weapons or surveillance.
While the Pentagon has rejected these limitations, arguing that it should be able to use Anthropic’s models for lawful purposes, this case highlights how private companies are increasingly tied to digital warfare.
Report by the The Wall Street Journal cited a similar view from Pope Leo XIV, who warns that AI-controlled weapons could promote an “anti-human” view of war. He warned that autonomy could reduce some dangers and distance political leaders from the human consequences of the conflict.
There is a need to balance the pros and cons of AI
However, artificial intelligence promises several benefits for modern warfare, most notably in its ability to process enormous amounts of information extremely quickly. With modern computing, the military can respond to threats at lightning speed, improve accuracy and precision, reduce risks to soldiers, and potentially reduce civilian casualties as well.
Critics also question whether human oversight of AI systems makes sense if the person responsible has only seconds to act on the information generated by the AI.
It also remains to be determined which party or group of parties should be held responsible for any mishap or incident – human operators, commanders, hardware manufacturers and software developers are just some of the parties to be judged.
“We may be the last generation capable of setting the conditions under which humanity and machines coexist,” António Guterres warned separately in an article X, warning that AI must be governed, trusted and fair.
“It sounds like science fiction, but it’s a real possibility, and it could change the world in ways we don’t yet understand, and it could change the power dynamics of our planet in ways that need our attention,” added Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
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