Convention on certain Conventional Weapons:
About:
- Known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention at times.It is a set of regulations that forbids or restricts the use of weapons deemed to inflict needless, unjustifiable, and indiscriminate suffering, such as booby traps that don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, blinding lasers, and incendiary explosives.
- Killer robots are not covered by the convention.
killer robots
- Rapid advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, and image recognition are enabling the development of weapons that are largely regarded as weapons that make decisions with little to no human intervention.
- Since people operate the drones remotely and select targets and fire when necessary, the drones that the US has deployed extensively in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places are not regarded as robots.
Why do people find them attractive?
- Make quicker decisions than a human would by delegating more battlefield duties to autonomous systems like driverless tanks and drones that independently determine when to strike.
- The weapons promise to keep soldiers out of harm’s way.
Criticisms
- No matter how advanced technology gets, it is morally abhorrent to give machines the ability to make life-threatening decisions.
- The inability of a machine to distinguish between an adult and a child, or between a fighter and a civilian, raises ethical questions for society regarding the replacement of human judgments regarding life and death with sensor, software, and machine processes.