The U.N. Will Not Stand For Killer Robots

President Obama may have finally clarified the U.S. position on armed assassins in the sky, but the next wave of drone controversy may now center on whether robots on the field of battle are smart enough to gun down human beings. At a the meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday, a top U.N. official on execution gave the world his best Sarah Connor impression, urging for a moratorium on terminators Lethal Autonomous Robotics (LARs), a warning he hopes will stop a future of killer robots that may be past the point of no return if leading military technologists have anything to say about it. "War without reflection is mechanical slaughter.... A decision to allow machines to be deployed to kill human beings worldwide — whatever weapons they use — deserves a collective pause," said Heyns, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. That is one fancy title, but his message is simple, familiar, and likely in vain: Many advocates would still rather trust a human to pull a trigger than leave it to SkyNet, or, well, a machine set to autopilot by the U.S., Israeli, British, or Korean military.