Autonomous drones: UN rights chief urges weapons ban

UN human rights chief Volker Turk called Monday for an urgent ban on weapons that can kill without human involvement after saying he was horrified by reports that fully autonomous Russian drones killed three Ukrainians last month.

Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council, Turk also highlighted reports that Ukraine had field-tested such weapons.

The New York Times reported last month that a Russian drone guided entirely by an artificial intelligence system killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine, on July 6. It reported that human operators had programmed the drone to travel toward a particular petrol station, but that the drone chose its exact target, likely propane tanks, without human intervention.

“I join calls for the urgent prohibition of weapons that can take lives without human involvement,” Turk said.

In the same address, Turk warned that advanced artificial intelligence could pose an “existential risk to humanity” and called for faster action on AI governance. He said too much power over AI was held by a small number of people and companies, and said he would write to AI companies urging them to reduce risks within their control.

There has been growing pressure from international organisations and non-governmental groups to regulate lethal autonomous weapons, sometimes called “killer robots”. Last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric said the world was “dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines”.

After years of discussions, 128 countries agreed at the UN on Saturday on a definition of autonomous weapons. Countries are due to decide in November whether to launch full treaty negotiations on regulating them.