As if the ever-increasing use of drones wasn't bad and evil enough, now comes news of killer robots being in the pipeline. Needless to say wiser heads, a la Human Rights Watch and Harvard's Law School have called for these futuristic "vehicles'" of death and destruction to be banned.
"The predator drone – an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – is one of the relatively new lethal weapons used by the United States for targeted killings of suspected terrorists, particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia.
And since it is unmanned and remotely controlled, the drone does not risk the lives of U.S. soldiers.
But the weapon has increasingly come under fire because of the collateral damage in the spillover killings of innocent civilians, including women and children.
On Monday, a report jointly published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) has warned of an even more deadly weapon: killer robots.
Described as fully autonomous, these weapons will have the capability to select and fire on targets without human intervention in future wars.
The primary concern of HRW and IHRC is the impact fully autonomous weapons would have on the protection of civilians during times of war.
In the report released Monday, they called on governments to pre-emptively ban these yet-to-be deployed weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict."
"The predator drone – an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – is one of the relatively new lethal weapons used by the United States for targeted killings of suspected terrorists, particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia.
And since it is unmanned and remotely controlled, the drone does not risk the lives of U.S. soldiers.
But the weapon has increasingly come under fire because of the collateral damage in the spillover killings of innocent civilians, including women and children.
On Monday, a report jointly published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) has warned of an even more deadly weapon: killer robots.
Described as fully autonomous, these weapons will have the capability to select and fire on targets without human intervention in future wars.
The primary concern of HRW and IHRC is the impact fully autonomous weapons would have on the protection of civilians during times of war.
In the report released Monday, they called on governments to pre-emptively ban these yet-to-be deployed weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict."
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