Trinidad and To­ba­go, through the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, is lead­ing the con­ver­sa­tion along­side Cari­com Im­pacs and So­ka Gakkai In­ter­na­tion­al, to pro­pose a ze­ro-draft pol­i­cy to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to gov­ern the way le­gal au­to­mat­ed weapon sys­tems are used in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

These weapons, al­so called slaugh­ter­bots, use ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) to iden­ti­fy, se­lect and kill hu­man tar­gets with­out hu­man in­ter­ven­tion. They are re­port­ed­ly be­ing used in the Russ­ian-Ukraine war and were the sub­ject of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Con­fer­ence on the So­cial and Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Im­pact of Au­tonomous Weapons in Ju­ly.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing the tea break on the first of a two-day con­fer­ence on the Hu­man Im­pacts of Au­tonomous Weapons Sys­tems at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said the weapons, which are pow­ered by AI, do not val­ue the lives of the av­er­age cit­i­zen and can there­fore lead to civil­ian causal­i­ties.

“There is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of a weapon be­ing able to pause. If you just take the clas­sic ex­am­ple, some­body is aim­ing a gun at some­body across the street and a child be­gins to run across the street, in the nor­mal course of things a sol­dier who is man­ning that gun would pause be­cause he recog­nis­es that he is about to in­ter­fere with the life of an in­no­cent civil­ian. Where you have an al­go­rithm pow­er­ing that weapon, there is no pause, so that civil­ians are go­ing to be­come ma­jor ca­su­al­ties to this new weapons sys­tem,” he said.

Ar­mour said an in­ter­na­tion­al treaty will seek to reg­u­late the re­spon­si­ble use of these new weapons sys­tems which can cause “mas­sive harm” to mem­bers of the pub­lic.

How­ev­er, the AG said de­spite this threat, there are no cur­rent re­ports of such weapons be­ing utilised in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He stressed the im­por­tance of this coun­try’s in­volve­ment in call­ing for the reg­u­lat­ed use of au­to­mat­ed weapons.

“We are con­fi­dent that we have a role to play. We punch above our weight in many re­spects, in many fo­ra, and we are con­fi­dent that we should take the lead in this par­tic­u­lar dis­cus­sion be­cause it is crit­i­cal to our se­cu­ri­ty,” Ar­mour said.

“Even as we ac­knowl­edge that our present chal­lenges are press­ing, we are not go­ing to pause on our grasp of our fu­ture be­cause our present chal­lenges are con­strain­ing.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ar­mour de­clined to give a time­line as to when he fet these weapons could reach the Caribbean, but he said ac­tion is re­quired now.

“I couldn’t pre­dict that and I wouldn’t want to pre­dict that. I would say it’s ur­gent. I would sim­ply use the word ur­gent,” he said.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said while the Gov­ern­ment has placed fo­cus on the im­por­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of arms, the Au­gust 30 dis­cov­ery of “ghost firearms” which were man­u­fac­tured by 3D print­ing tech­nol­o­gy, proves that tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to evolve, and so too should crime-fight­ing strate­gies.

“That in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues. The po­lice, and to their great cred­it, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence re­ceived had been mon­i­tor­ing cer­tain cir­cum­stances around it for quite some time and I am aware that they did par­tic­u­lar­ly good work to have land­ed them at that 3D man­u­fac­tur­ing lo­ca­tion,” he said.

Hinds said while many cit­i­zens con­demn the TTPS, this probe calls for strong com­men­da­tion of the law­men in­volved in the case.