Nations renew talks on ‘killer robots’ as deal hopes narrow

By JAMEY KEATEN
Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) — The countries behind a U.N. agreement on weapons have been meeting this week on the thorny issue of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Known colloquially as “killer robots,” advocacy groups want to strictly limit or ban them. The latest conference of countries behind a Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is tackling an array of issues from incendiary weapons, explosive remnants of war, a specific category of land mines, and the autonomous weapons systems. Opponents of such systems fear a dystopian day when tanks, submarines, robots or fleets of drones with facial-recognition software could roam without human oversight and strike against human targets.