
In 2018, Laura Nolan - a top software engineer - resigned from her role at Google in protest. First thoughts turn to gender pay gaps, poor work/life balance, workplace harassment or similar – but you’d be wrong. She resigned over killer robots.
Faced with the prospect of working on a project that would dramatically enhance US military drone technology, Nolan instead called for a ban on autonomous war systems, stating that those not guided by human remote control should be outlawed by the same sort of international treaty that prohibits chemical weapons.

28.03.20
Without human control and intervention, Nolan argued, killer robots have the potential to do “calamitous things that they were not originally programmed for.”
In September 2019, The Guardian expanded upon Nolan’s views:
The likelihood of a disaster is in proportion to how many of these machines will be in a particular area at once. What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed.
There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways. Which is why any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous.
The project itself focused on developing AI technology that could differentiate between people and objects at an infinitely faster rate than the current set-up (whereby military operatives sift through hour after hour of drone footage to accurately identify enemy targets).
The contract for the project lapsed in March 2019 after a petition protesting Google’s involvement was signed by more than 3,000 of their employees.
And they weren’t alone in their concern.
The catchily titled Campaign to Stop Killer Robots was launched in October 2012, and describe themselves as: a coalition of non-governmental organizations that is working to ban fully autonomous weapons and thereby retain meaningful human control over the use of force.
Their website states the following want a ban on fully autonomous weapons:
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30 countries
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110+ non-governmental organisations
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4,500 artificial intelligence experts
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United Nations Secretary-General
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The European Parliament
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Human Rights Council rapporteurs
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26 Nobel Peace Laureates
