ICRAC Members Daniele Amoroso and Guglielmo Taburrini have completed a new ICRAC Working paper #4 on “What makes human control over weapons “Meaningful”? The paper was prepared for distribution at the August 2019 meeting of the United Nations CCW GGE on Lethal Autonomous Weapons. The paper can be downloaded from our Resources Page, along with […] Continue Reading

Statement delivered by ICRAC Vice-chair Peter Asaro to the CCW GGE Informal Session on the Chair’s Non-Paper, August 19, 2019. “The International Committee for Robot Arms Control, which is a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, would like to thank the Chair for this Draft, and make the following comments and requests. First […] Continue Reading

As delivered by Prof. Peter Asaro ICRAC has been pleased to hear states shift their focus away from definitions of the technologies of autonomous weapons systems and move towards discussing restriction of their use with regards to how they should be controlled. Of course, by definition, if states wanted genuine meaningful human control of weapons […] Continue Reading

As delivered by Prof. Roser Martínez Quirante (in Spanish)   Mr. President, representatives of nations, members of civil society, During the past 5 years, at the Convention on Conventional Weapons, we have seen a greater understanding of the problems and challenges posed by autonomous weapon systems. The ICRAC is satisfied with the general consensus on […] Continue Reading

As delivered by Prof. Noel Sharkey Mr Chairman, Over the last 5 years at the CCW we have seen an increased understanding of the issues and challenges posed by autonomous weapons systems. ICRAC is pleased with the general consensus that we must retain human control over weapons systems, in particular, over the critical functions of […] Continue Reading

As delivered by Dr. Elke Schwarz Thank you, Mr Chairperson, The International Committee for Robot Arms Control is pleased to see states move away from the use of broad, brush-stroke terms such as in-the-loop, on-the-loop, the wider loop, human oversight, and appropriate human judgement. We agree with the working paper from Estonia and Finland that […] Continue Reading

International Committee for Robot Arms Control Statement to the UN GGE Meeting 2018 Delivered by Prof. Noel Sharkey, on 11 April 2018 Mr Chairperson, We have been very pleased with this morning’s session as states begin to contemplate a move towards policies on the human control of weapons systems. On a pedantic note: we cannot […] Continue Reading

Guidelines for the human control of weapons systems [PDF] Authored by Noel Sharkey, chair of ICRAC[1] Since 2014, high contracting parties to the CCW have expressed interest and concern about the meaningful human control of weapons systems. There is an extensive scientific and engineering literature on the dynamics of human-machine interaction and human supervisory control […] Continue Reading

International Committee for Robot Arms Control Statement to the UN GGE Meeting 2018 Delivered by Prof. Noel Sharkey, on 10 April 2018 Mr. Chairperson, There have been very useful and interesting discussions this morning. I speak here as chair of an academic NGO: the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and as a member […] Continue Reading

International Committee for Robot Arms Control Statement to the UN GGE Meeting 2018 Delivered by Dr Thompson Chengeta, on 9 April 2018 Mr. Chairperson, I speak on behalf of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control [ICRAC], a founding member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Ambassador Gill, we thank you for your important […] Continue Reading