Japan adopts policy against fully autonomous lethal weapons

Well done Japan..

The Foreign Ministry submitted a paper stating Japan's stance on lethal autonomous weapons systems, or LAWS, to the United Nations in May, saying a "human-centric" 

Let's keep the wars human centric!

Not sure it is a good thing and if they want to rule out Giant Robos.

With the SDF acute problem of depopulation and recruitment deficits and the cost performance calculations it is just a matter of time before this 'rule' just becomes a general guideline.

The Japanese government has recently adopted a policy against the development of fully autonomous lethal weapons, stressing that the use of such arms should never be allowed across the world.

But Japan refuse to sign treaty on banning nuclear weapon worldwide.

A mistake. Eventually these will be the only weapons Japan can field.

Just as land mines continue killing innocent civilians inter generationally, these autonomous weapons will become a similar problem.

And if the U.S. says, "heck no, we're going to produce and use...." then what Japan? Just like the TPNW, where U.S. goes, Japan follows.

Fully autonomous lethal weapons? Bite the hand....

Wise decision.

Great move! I doubt the US will follow suit though...

I commend Japan on this decision but as with all things, decisions will change when the situation demands. God forbid if Japan does get dragged into a more challenging security situation, it will probably develop robots that can do more than serve your food or look after the elderly. I mean, Japan excels in robotics, if there was a country that can make a bots that can kick booty, it's Japan.

And if the U.S. says, "heck no, we're going to produce and use...." then what Japan? Just like the TPNW, where U.S. goes, Japan follows.

US law requires a human to authorize use of deadly force, even by remotely operated vehicles. You would be surprised but when American UAVs and even many manned systems attack targets there are lawyers watching the action in real time consulting with battlefield commanders on the legality of releasing weapons in that particular situation. Those UAV pilots at Creech AFB north of Las Vegas always have a more senior officer and an attorney looking over their shoulder before they let them attack anything.

Other young Alien civilizations beyond Type 1 that managed to cross the Great Filter create robots/probes to visit distant stars (Earth, etc.) and map entire galaxies without sacrificing their species in their decades/centuries-long interstellar voyage through the cosmos.

Meanwhile type 0 Humans:

Ok now we're smart let's make fully autonomous lethal weapons to kill our own species across the planet.

This article alone gives out 2 answers for the Fermi Paradox.

1- It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself

2- Earth is deliberately being avoided

(Aliens find us way too primitive and violent to interact with - the zoo hypothesis)

fully autonomous lethal weapons

Shameful that some of the best minds in the world are being used to develop and maximize the killing potential of LAWS, instead of those minds being used to find ways to improve lives for more people, also shameful that scarce natural resources are being used to create LAWS. And some of the corporations that have profited most from making weapons of all sorts have also profited making chemicals that have killed and maimed millions around the globe. But war has been big business and has powered the economies of many countries for a long time, while weakening the economies of others. Too many politicians are beholden to corporations that benefit from war, and too many individual investors have also padded their bank accounts buying shares in corporations making weapons. Privately held businesses such as Parsons and Bechtel have gotten fatter using their influence to get huge government contracts, and if there is such a thing as a 'deep state', those two along with think tanks like the Heritage Foundation among others could be said to comprise it.

Counting them chickens........

Might want to move past fax machines and floppy disks first

I don't think were talking about the Terminator or the Matrix...not just yet anyway but the moral implications of allowing AI to make the decision to kill a human. It's probably already happened and will happen in increasing frequency in the future. Swarm of autonomous, armed drones can act and process faster than the human chain of command. In many simulations even the best fighter pilots can't beat AI jets not only because they can withstand higher G's but because they have zero fear. It's a nice gesture from Japan but no country/military is really going to prohibit this.

Haven't really thought about this but top of my head I'm inclined to having autonomous weapons. These weapons would still be acting according to its programming and thus predictable.

It will act even against human autonomous law enforcement weapons that are acting against its directive.

How about adopting a policy against the use of nuclear weapons???

The way Japanese foreign policies are being run? Every comes out as political.

Growing food and sharing it with fellow members of the Planet and their companion species is a noble mission. The humble plough was a weapon of mass construction in the wise hands of our world building ancestors.

SanjinosebleedToday 09:15 am JST

Great move! I doubt the US will follow suit though...

As well the US should not. Getting China and Russia to have the higher standard of moral behavior in their treaties has proven impossible.

How far are we from the robot apocalypse?

Desert tortoise above re: US Law and robots. US Law also says dont send military supplies to countries breaching "Human Rights Lawa " or using starvation as a tool of warfare.

Well, that means "diddley squat " in the case of the US strongest ME ally, doesnt it.?

I think the US has good laws on things involving aid and war....but these laws are ignored.

By the same token, Japan should spearhead other nations and call on all nations to part with weapons of mass destruction －nuclear arsenal, et. al.

However, this does not include Chinese, Koreans, or Russians.

I think the US has good laws on things involving aid and war....but these laws are ignored.

They're not ignored. I was listening to the Commandant of the Marine Corps speaking on the subject of unmanned systems and AI, and there really isn't anything that is truly "unmanned". There is always a human operator. He used the example of a naval weapon we call CIWS for Close In Weapons System, nicknamed R2D2 by sailors for its physical appearance. It is a 20 mm gatling gun system used as point defense against incoming missiles. It is autonomous since it has to react faster than any human possibly could, but a human has to activate it and enter the engagement parameters the gun will use to decide of something is a legitimate threat of not. That gun, btw, has been in the fleet for around 50 years, so when people wring their hands about autonomy and AI, it has been around in military hardware for longer than a lot of the critics have been alive. CIWS, Aegis and vertical launch all came out of the solving the problem of the Soviet Navy, which was going to chuck a couple of hundred anti ship cruise missiles at our strike groups from bombers, surface ships and subs, all coming at us from different directions and different heights. How do you defeat that kind of mass saturation attack? You develop a system that can sort through all the incoming missiles and very quickly figure out what ship firing what missile or gun engages each target and then does it as rapidly as possible. A human has to make the decision to release weapons but once the decision is made ( not a hard one to make when your radar screens are lit up by all those incoming missiles ) the computers and sensors do their job without further human intervention.

A lot of modern cruise missiles are autonomous after launch. Most are assigned a target at launch but some of the more recent anti ship missiles go way out past the horizon and are able to discriminate among ships it senses to find a legitimate enemy warship to attack, and not attack neutral shipping. The missile is so far out from the launch platform often operating in a heavy electronic warfare environment that makes communicating with the missile impossible so the missile has to know what's a target and what's not and make that decision on its own without human intervention. Those are out there now with most modern navies.

The Commandant was discussing how that will work in the future. The laws of war say we have to have a human make the decision to release weapons and that drives requirements for communications to these systems and other features.