Killer robots are here. What should we do with them?

UN is debating how to utilize killer robots this week.
(Image credit: iStock)

The United Nations' Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is meeting in Geneva this week to discuss the future of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) — technology more colloquially known as killer robots. Specifically under consideration are robots that can make their own decisions about who to kill independent of human direction.

Though hardly as advanced as the robots of science fiction, LAWs already exist. In fact, they're employed by South Korea in the demilitarized zone bordering North Korea. There, a robot made by Samsung can independently identify and shoot human targets as far as 2.5 miles away.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.