I am not quite sure about you, but when the term “killer robot” is used, most of the time, my mind would be ushered into the realm of science fiction movies such as HAL9000 as well as the Terminator series, although to a certain extent, you can call the Red Queen computer in the Resident Evil movie series to be a liberal application of the term “killer robot”, too. Apparently, the United Nations (UN) recently discussed the legality of autonomous killer robots, and it seems that this bevy of world leaders agree that lethal, fully autonomous machines, or killer robots for the simple, ought to be banned.
In the U.N.’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons that comprises of 115 states, intends to ban or limit the use of weapons which could kill civilians indiscriminately or result in unnecessary pain, and these range from mines to lasers that have been specially designed to blind people. This group also hopes to agree on what an autonomous weapon is, and it remains to be seen whether a killer robot falls under that category, before the suits continue discussing the legal and ethical questions when it comes to using such weapons.
International organizations including Human Rights Watch and the Red Cross have already weighed in on the matter, where they championed for an outright ban on autonomous killing machines.