GENEVA – A United Nations special investigator, Christof Heyns, issued a call for a global moratorium on the testing, production and use of armed robots that can select and kill targets without human command, a futuristic scenario he said is “drawing frightfully near.” The United States, Britain, Israel and South Korea already use technologies that are seen as precursors to fully autonomous systems. Little is known about Russian and Chinese work on the technology. “My concern is that we may find ourselves on the other side of a line, and then it is very difficult to go back. If there’s ever going to be a time to regulate or stop these weapons, it’s now.” Mr. Heyns urged the council to set up a high-level panel to report within a year on the state of the art in “lethal autonomous robotics” and to assess whether international laws are adequate to control their use. NYTimes, May 31, 2013.
