Vatican again calls for a moratorium on killer robots

CNA Staff, Aug 30, 2024 / 14:12 pm (CNA).

A representative of Pope Francis recently reaffirmed the Vatican’s opposition to lethal autonomous weapons systems, known popularly as “killer robots,” with the Vatican stressing that “no machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.”

Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva since 2023, spoke at a United Nations forum in Geneva this week, the Second Session of the 2024 Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS).

Balestrero strongly urged countries to consider the ethical implications of new weapons and lamented the fact that new and more sophisticated armaments are often tested on real battlefields.

“For the Holy See, given the pace of technological advancements and the research on weaponization of artificial intelligence, it is of the utmost urgency to deliver concrete results in the form of a solid legally binding instrument and in the meantime to establish an immediate moratorium on their development and use,” Balestrero said in an Aug. 26 address.

“In this regard, it is profoundly distressing that, adding to the suffering caused by armed conflicts, the battlefields are also becoming testing grounds for more and more sophisticated weapons.”

No universally agreed-upon definition of LAWS exists, but numerous countries around the world — including Israel, China, Russia, and the United States — are reportedly investing heavily in weapons with autonomous capabilities. These systems have the ability to navigate on their own and select targets without human input.

The Vatican and Pope Francis have raised concerns about LAWS for years, with the Holy See questioning whether such weapons systems could irreversibly alter the nature of warfare, create detachment from human agency, and call into question the humanity of societies.

“For the Holy See, autonomous weapons systems cannot be considered as morally responsible entities,” Balestrero continued.

“The human person, endowed with reason, possesses a unique capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making that cannot be replicated by any set of algorithms, no matter how complex.”

“In conclusion, the development of ever more sophisticated weapons is certainly not the solution,” the archbishop said.

“The undoubted benefits that humanity will be able to draw from the current technological progress will depend on the degree to which such progress is accompanied by an adequate development of responsibility and values that place technological advancements at the service of integral human development and of the common good.”

In 2021, in light of reports of development of swarms of “kamikaze” mini-drones in modern warfare, the Holy See said it was critical to maintain “meaningful human control over weapon systems.”

“The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and such a capacity cannot be replaced by, or programmed into, a machine,” the Vatican’s then-U.N. Geneva ambassador said.

At a G7 summit in June, Pope Francis himself had urged leaders to reconsider the development of lethal autonomous weapons and to ban their use. The pope himself made a similar call at an AI ethics conference in July.