Relevance: GS-2: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests;

GS-3:Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology;

GS-4:Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in-human actions.

Key phrases: Autonomous drone attack, Killer robots, lethal autonomous weapons systems, robotics, AI and image recognition, lethal decision making, technological sophistication, algorithmic decisions, threshold for war, non-binding Code of Conduct, Convention on Certain Conventional Weapon.

Why in News?

• A  March  report  from  a  UN  panel  said the first autonomous drone attack may  have  already happened in Libya. Yet, a UN conclave in Geneva  last week failed to regulate the use of killer robots on the battlefield.

Keypoints:

• While there is no clear definition, and we are nowhere close to the level of advancement, science fiction like Terminator, Blade Runner, and Robocop depicts, killer robots include machines that can make their own decisions with little to no human involvement.
• Collectively, these weapons fall under Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), which can include bombs, dog-like robots, and more that can use AI and other digital technologies to make decisions on the battlefield.
  • It doesn’t include drones, which are manned remotely by pilots.
• Rapid improvements in robotics, AI and image recognition are making such armaments possible.

Why the demand for such machines?

• Many militaries want to use such machines since it will reduce the number of human soldiers who would be put in peril.
• In addition, robots are often considered more efficient, can traverse terrains that humans may not be able to, and can be used for things like crowd control.
• But most importantly, many proponents of killer robots for warfare argue that using robots instead  of humans can  significantly reduce the cost of war.

Need for Regulation:

• Critics argue that it is morally repugnant to assign lethal decision making to machines, regardless of technological sophistication.
• In addition, they note that algorithmic decisions like this aren’t dependable as they could be subject to algorithmic biases, and humans wouldn’t have control over the profiling and decisions robots take.
• Though it would reduce cost of war but this comes at the cost of removing mercy from the battlefield.
• Moreover, It could also reduce the threshold for war.

Opposition to the convention:

• While there are a significant number of countries who are not opposing the disarmament of such weapons, those who have invested in such technologies oppose it.
• Some, like Russia, insist that any decisions on limits must be unanimous — in effect giving opponents a veto.
• The United States argues that existing international laws are sufficient and that banning autonomous weapons technology would be premature.
• The country has also proposed a “non-binding Code of Conduct", for countries that use killer robots.

Way Forward:

• Autonomous weapon systems raise ethical concerns for society about substituting human decisions about life and death with sensor, software and machine processes.
• The evolution of these machines is considered a potentially seismic event in warfare, akin to the invention of gunpowder and nuclear bombs. Hence their use needs to be regulated.
• In this light, The UN group agreed to meet for 10 days over 2022 to discuss how to control the use of killer robots.

Source: Live Mint

Mains Question:

Q. Rise of Killer robots -drones, guns and bombs that decide on their own, has demonstrated that the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons needs to be revamped. Comment. (150 Words)