AI (artificial intelligence) in The Guardian
 |
| ‘When AI is used for targeting, it brings a similar feigned omniscience to killing.’ Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA |
Fri 2 Oct 2026
As tech leaders warn about the threats of artificial intelligence, most conjure up images of AI agents running amok,
such as hacking systems used to run our critical infrastructure, banks
or even militaries. Yet one serious danger is mentioned less frequently –
the threat posed by AI–empowered lethal weapons. Fully autonomous versions of these weapons are colloquially known as killer robots.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows that, in an important respect, such AI weapon systems are already here. An algorithm has been deciding who lives and who dies.
For
more than a decade, governments have been meeting in Geneva to stop the
development of autonomous AI weapons. In early September, 128 governments met to approve a report that could serve as the foundation for a binding treaty.
But a collection of lawyers sent by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin teamed up to water it down. Notably, they weakened a provision that requires humans to review military targets developed by AI before a strike.
Fully
autonomous weapons remain the focus; the use of AI to determine targets
for conventional weapons is not. At risk is the longstanding quest to
maintain a “human in the loop” – that is, meaningful or effective “human control” of AI-empowered weaponry.
For many people, talk of killer robots conjures up images of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Terminator.
I have often thought about the problem in the context of the Tahrir
Square uprising at the height of the Arab spring that led to the ouster
of the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak’s fate was sealed when the Egyptian army made clear it would refuse
to fire on Egyptian protesters. But killer robots would have had no
such qualms. If Mubarak had been able to deploy them, he might have
stayed in power.
The negotiators in Geneva are not even addressing this problem. The Trump-Putin lawyers made sure that the agreed report referred only to war, not repression.
Today, amid the drone warfare in eastern Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian
troops are experimenting with fully autonomous weapons to overcome
jamming of the signals used to control drones. We can expect these
nascent deployments to expand.
Yet the “killer
robot” metaphor is deceptive. If we look at targeting decisions more
expansively, AI has already taken over. In Gaza, the Israeli military is
using AI to target Palestinians.
Israel has long monitored phone communications in that territory... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/02/ai-weapons-systems-algorithms-war
