Kenneth Roth: AI weapon systems have arrived, algorithms should not decide who lives and who dies

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, writes in The Guardian that AI-enabled lethal weapon systems are already being used in real combat, and algorithms are deciding who lives and who dies. He notes that governments have been negotiating in Geneva for more than a decade to stop the development of autonomous AI weapons. In early September this year, 128 governments met and adopted a report that could serve as the basis for a binding treaty, but legal teams sent by Trump and Putin worked together to weaken it, especially the provision requiring human review of AI-generated military targets before strikes. The report also only addresses war, not repression. The article cites Gaza as an example: after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the Israeli military used an AI system named Lavender to identify phone patterns of suspected Hamas members, and used another automated system, Where's Daddy?, to track their residences and carry out strikes, resulting in the deaths of their families as well. In theory, humans remain in the loop, but intelligence officers spend an average of only 20 seconds reviewing each target, describing themselves as merely stamping approvals, making human judgment a formality.