Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, will at­tempt to re­duce the threats of lethal au­tonomous weapons sys­tems or “killer ro­bots” through leg­is­la­tion. The lat­est move comes as the coun­try con­tin­ues to grap­ple with gun vi­o­lence and a climb­ing mur­der count which has al­ready crossed 300 for the year.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, fol­low­ing the end of a two-day re­gion­al work­shop on Achiev­ing the Uni­ver­sal­i­sa­tion of the Con­ven­tion on Cer­tain Con­ven­tion­al Weapons at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Ar­mour main­tained that the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) to kill hu­man tar­gets is a con­cern that au­thor­i­ties can­not turn a blind eye to.

“We met to­day main­ly to dis­cuss the fact that we would like to dis­cuss among our gov­ern­ments in Cari­com ... I would want to make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Cab­i­net that we need to de­vel­op leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late how these al­go­rithm-dri­ven au­tonomous weapons are go­ing to pop­u­late our earth,” he said.

Ar­mour un­der­scored the lo­cal and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty threats of pre-pro­grammed weapons us­ing al­go­rithms. “There is no stop, when an al­go­rithm says shoot and kill and a child runs across the road, that child is dead and we are con­cerned to make sure we reg­u­late it in the present, deal­ing with the fu­ture.”

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained from au­tonomous weapons.org, “Slaugh­ter­bots”, al­so called “lethal au­tonomous weapons sys­tems” or “killer ro­bots”, are weapons sys­tems that use ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to iden­ti­fy, se­lect, and kill hu­man tar­gets with­out hu­man in­ter­ven­tion. Where­as in the case of un­manned mil­i­tary drones the de­ci­sion to com­mit the act is made re­mote­ly by a hu­man op­er­a­tor.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al stat­ed that the con­ven­tion was a step in join­ing the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in adopt­ing new and bind­ing reg­u­la­tions on le­gal au­tonomous weapons sys­tems (LAWS).

“Com­ing out of this learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, I am go­ing to be go­ing to Cab­i­net with rec­om­men­da­tions and out of that Cab­i­net may or may not ac­cept my rec­om­men­da­tions; if my rec­om­men­da­tions are ac­cept­ed, we will be tak­ing that to our law re­form com­mis­sion to de­vel­op se­ri­ous pol­i­cy that will then in­form the leg­is­la­tion.”

The two-day work­shop, which fea­tured re­gion­al law­mak­ers, was spon­sored by the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice for Dis­ar­ma­ment Af­fairs, Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty and came near­ly three months af­ter the Cari­com sym­po­sium on crime which was host­ed in T&T.

Among the out­comes of the re­gion­al work­shop was the pro­mo­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tion among Cari­com mem­ber states to de­vel­op a com­mon po­si­tion on LAWS and a rec­om­men­da­tion that the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment adopt a de­c­la­ra­tion on LAWS.

Cam­paign Out­reach Man­ag­er for “Stop Killer Ro­bots”, Is­abelle Jones told Guardian Me­dia about the im­por­tance of in­ter­na­tion­al laws on an au­tonomous weapons sys­tem to en­sure mean­ing­ful con­trol over the use of force.

“In­ter­na­tion­al dis­cus­sions have ac­tu­al­ly been on­go­ing for the last decade but this is a re­al­ly ur­gent and press­ing is­sue for po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, gov­ern­ments and for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to be dis­cussing be­cause more and more we are see­ing in­creas­ing use and de­vel­op­ment of weapon sys­tems that have au­ton­o­my in them,” said Jones.

UN Chief of Ser­vice at the Of­fice of Dis­ar­ma­ment Af­fairs Melanie Regim­bal al­so spoke about the im­por­tance of the con­ven­tion.

“The ob­jec­tive is to un­der­stand the frame­work un­der which laws are start­ing to be looked at and stud­ied and in this case, it is the con­ven­tion on cer­tain con­ven­tion­al weapons and the idea is to bring on board many of the Caribbean states that are not a par­ty to this con­ven­tion but al­so to en­gage in a re­gion­al di­a­logue on the top­ic of LAWS.”