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Should robots make life and death decisions? Religious leaders are asked to tell governments “Never”.
Delegate life and death decisions to a machine? Robots respecting the laws of war? A weapon programmed to hunt and shoot? Who is accountable?
Diplomats, soldiers, scholars and concerned citizens will meet in Geneva immediately after Easter to discuss these and other implications of a new class of arms known as “lethal autonomous weapons”, or “killer robots”.
Meanwhile, the World Council of Churches (WCC) is asking national and local religious leaders to take a stand against fully autonomous weapons by signing an interfaith declaration that calls for “a comprehensive, pre-emptive ban” of the weapons.
“It is likely – but not inevitable – that the world’s first fully autonomous weapons will be deployed in the near future. It is not inevitable because collective action can stop these weapons now,” said Jonathan Frerichs, WCC programme executive for peace building and disarmament.
The interfaith declaration calls on all governments to join the international debate about fully autonomous weapons and to work towards a ban before they are developed and deployed.
“Robotic warfare is an affront to human dignity and to the sacredness of life,” the declaration says. The call has been issued by Pax, an organization in the Netherlands, and Pax Christi International.
“WCC member churches have pledged to tell their governments to ban weapons capable of targeting and killing human beings on their own, now, before they are made,” said Frerichs. “That is why we are asking church leaders to join in supporting this interfaith declaration now.”
Scores of religious leaders and organizations around the world have already signed the interfaith call for a ban on fully autonomous weapons. Signatories include Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Archbishop Dr Antje Jackelén of the Church of Sweden, Rev. Ching-An Yeh of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, Dr Andrew Dutney, president of the Uniting Church in Australia and members of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs from Jordan, Nigeria, Finland, Indonesia, Russia, USA and Tahiti.
WCC representatives will take part in the 13-17 April meeting at the United Nations in Geneva. The second such conference in two years, it may only lead to further discussions given the complexity of the issue and rapid developments of relevant technologies with both civilian and military uses. Civil society organizations are already urging governments to begin negotiations on substantive controls, so that the moral threshold of having machines kill people is not crossed.
The WCC 10th Assembly in 2013 recommended that governments “declare their support for a pre-emptive ban on drones and other robotic weapons systems that will select and strike targets without human intervention when operating in fully autonomous mode”, in the assembly’s statement on The Way of Just Peace issued in Busan, Republic of Korea.
South Korea and Israel currently deploy armed robots to guard their borders, with a human operator in overall control, according to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
Sign the interfaith declaration in support of a ban on fully autonomous weapons
Factsheet interfaith declaration
List of signatories for interfaith declaration
