Do you want to be a part of the international campaign to stop killer robots?
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The Norwegian Peace Association is part of the international campaign to stop killer robots. The main goal of the campaign is to establish an international preventative ban to the development and use of autonomous weapons without meaningful human control. Here, we are talking about autonomous weapons which can identify and attack living targets without any meaningful human control or oversight over the decision or action of the weapon.
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Published 05. 09. 2018
The state parties to the UNs inhumane weapons convention, which includes Norway, has discussed challenges posed by autonomous weapons systems, or killer robots, over the past few years. The Norwegian Peace Association has partaken in meetings of the weapons convention since 2014. Up until now, 26 countries haveagreed to ban the development and use of fully automated weapons system within this UN process.
Norway is among the states which have not taken a stand on autonomous weapons systems. We, as the Norwegian Peace Association, would like that to change: In May 2018, the research group 'Autonomous Weapons' was founded by Alexander Harang, Dredrik Heldal, Sigrid Heiberg and Lene Grimstad - right after we came back from the UNs first expert panel about autonomous weapons. The focus was to quickly establish a strengthened national activity on these topics in Norway.
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To get the research group up and running, we have met regularly before the summer. We have met the researcher and philosopher Henrik Syse at PRIO, as well as the Norwegian petroleum funds ethics council together with the dutch organisation PAX. A new report has also been launched: ’Autonom våpenutvikling og Den Europeiske Union’ ('Autonomous weapons development and the European Union'). At the same time, our lobbying work continued when Knut Arild Hareide (KRF) sent a written question about the development of completely and semi-autonomous weapons system to foreign minister Ine M. Eriksen Søreide in June. Then, the public holidays started, and we began meeting again in August. Over the past weeks we have met the Norwegian Red Cross and talked to the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research at the University of Agder.
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Next week, we will travel once again to Geneva to this years second and last expert panel session about autonomous weapons. Here, we hope to get a viable definition of autonomous weapons within the scope of the UN weapons convention, so thatm more countries will forbid autonomous weapons.
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Read our last publication here.