UN chief Guterres calls for global ban on lethal autonomous "killer robots"

Full text

UN Secretary General calls for a global ban on autonomous "killer robots”

Guterres argues that delegating life-or-death decisions to machines is “morally repugnant”

Governments should take a stance now – not wait for something catastrophic to happen

UN Secretary General António Guterres has called for lethal autonomous weapons, which he describes as ‘killer robots’ to be prohibited under international law following recent discussions at the first Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance in Geneva.

Guterres’ demand to ban these weapons focuses on those capable of identifying, selecting and attacking targets without human oversight, which leaves artificial intelligence and other computer systems in charge of a life-or-death decision.

He ultimately argued that certain decisions must remain exclusively human, and the decision to take a life is well into the boundary of requiring human oversight. Transferring the decision-making to killer robots would be “morally repugnant” and “politically unacceptable,” he argued.

AI requires global regulation as military AI poses major threats

Key to the Secretary General’s argument is that he urges governments to take action and ban such robots now, rather than waiting for an autonomous weapon to cause a major incident before rethinking their strategies.

“Let us not wait for atrocity to act,” Guterres said. “Some decisions must remain forever human – none more than taking a human life.”

The issue is becoming more urgent now that AI models and advanced chips are already being used within military intelligence, targeting and other battlefield systems.

More broadly, Guterres’ thoughts align with those of Anthropic, which recently had a dispute with the Pentagon after seeking guarantees that its models would not be used for autonomous weapons or surveillance.

While the Pentagon had rejected those limitations, arguing that it should be able to use Anthropic’s models for any lawful purpose, the case highlights how private companies are becoming increasingly intertwined with digital warfare.

Reporting by the Wall Street Journal cited a similar view by Pope Leo XIV, who warns that AI-controlled weapons could promote an “anti-human” view of warfare. He warned that the autonomy could reduce some dangers and distance political leaders from the human consequences of conflict.

There’s a need to balance the pros and cons of AI

However, artificial intelligence does promise several benefits to modern warfare, particularly in its ability to process huge amounts of information extremely quickly. With modern compute, militaries can respond to threats at lightning speed, improve their accuracy and precision, reduce soldier risk and potentially reduce civilian casualties, too.

Critics also question whether human oversight of AI systems is at all meaningful if the person in charge only has seconds to act on AI-generated information in the first place.

It’s also yet to be determined which party or group of parties should be held accountable for any incidents or mishaps – human operators, commanders, hardware manufacturers and software developers are just some of the parties up for judgment.

“We may be the last generation able to set the terms on which humanity and machines coexist,” Guterres warned separately in an X post , warning that AI must be governed, trusted and fair.

“It sounds like science fiction, but it's a real possibility, and it could change the world in ways that we don't understand yet, and it could change the power dynamics of our planet in ways that require our attention,” Independent International Scientific Panel on AI Co-Chair Yoshua Bengio added .