Russia and the United States at the UN removed the requirement for human control over military AI

While working on a draft international document on the regulation of autonomous weapons, delegates from Russia and the United States eliminated key restrictions on the operation of military AI. This is reported by The Washington Post (WP), citing sources and documents.

According to the interlocutors of the newspaper, the delegates deleted from the text the requirements that the systems should work “predictably” and “reliable”, as well as paragraphs that obliged to take into account ethical considerations when using AI weapons. Also, according to the publication, the project removed the requirement that before the attack, a person must double-check the targets selected by the algorithms.

The teams of Moscow and Washington consisted of about ten lawyers on each side - almost twice as many as any other state in the negotiations, sources say. Discussions were held with the UN cameras turned off and without the presence of observers from public organizations. The Russian Foreign Ministry, the US State Department and the UN did not respond to requests for comment.

The talks took place in Geneva at the meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, which met from August 31 to September 4. In November, parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons will meet again in Geneva to discuss the possibility of translating these consultations into a formal mandate or legally binding agreement.