UN agrees to discuss regulations on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) in 2017

Every five years, the 123 member nations of the international Convention on Conventional Weapons meet for a review conference. 89 Nations have agreed to establish a group of governmental experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems to address challenges posed by such weapons. Concerns raised include compliance with laws, human empathy which acts as a check on indiscriminate killings in times of conflict, the potential of such weapons being controlled by dictators who use them against the local population, and the accountability of autonomous weapons systems. Humans-out-of-the-loop weapons are fully autonomous, and can pick targets as well as make the choice to use lethal force without inputs from human operators. According to the Report of the 2016 Informal Meeting of Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, while all the parties agreed that such weapons do not yet exist, there was debate on whether the weapons would be developed in the near term future or the long term future.