Most people against fully autonomous weapons: survey

The general public are against the use of autonomous weapons capable of identifying and destroying targets without human input, according to a global survey by Vancouver-based University of British Columbia released on Monday.

According to the survey, more than 80 percent of the surveyed said such robots should not be used for aggression, and 67 percent said they should be banned across the planet.

More than 1,000 people from 54 countries, including the United States, Canada, South Korea, and Mexico, took part in the survey. It was conducted by the Open Roboethics initiative (ORi), a UBC-based group that studies issues concerning robotics and artificial intelligence.

"It has been said that future wars will be fought with completely automated systems," said AJung Moon, ORi spokesperson and a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at UBC, in a media release carried on the university's website.

"The survey results clearly show that more public discussion is necessary so that we can make intelligent decisions about robotic weapon technologies."

A total of 71-percent respondents said they preferred their country use remotely operated weapons, such as military drones, rather than fully autonomous weapons. A total of 56 percent said that autonomous weapons should never be developed or used at all, according to the press release.

The survey will be presented at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Meeting of States Parties slated for Nov. 12-13.

The CCW bans or restricts the use of specific types of weapons that could cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or affect civilians indiscriminately. Endit