Los sistemas de armas aut\u00f3nomos, com\u00fanmente conocidos como “robots asesinos”, pueden haber ejecutado acciones letales, sin supervisi\u00f3n de un operador humano,\u00a0seg\u00fan un informe reciente del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas, sobre la Guerra Civil en Libia.\u00a0La historia bien podr\u00eda identificar esto como el punto de partida de la pr\u00f3xima gran carrera armamentista, con el potencial de convertirse en algo incontrolable\u00a0para la humanidad.\u00a0No solo por las armas aut\u00f3nomas sofisticadas producidas por potencias tecnol\u00f3gicas, sino tambi\u00e9n por el riesgo de proliferaci\u00f3n de otras, muy baratas y accesibles, que sueles ser ya denominadas como los \u201cKalasnikov\u201d aut\u00f3nomos.<\/p>\n
Autonomous weapon systems \u2013 commonly known as killer robots \u2013 may have\u00a0killed human beings for the first time ever<\/a>\u00a0last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council\u00a0report on the Libyan civil war<\/a>. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity\u2019s final one.<\/p>\n Autonomous weapon systems are robots with lethal weapons that can operate independently, selecting and attacking targets without a human weighing in on those decisions. Militaries around the world are\u00a0investing heavily<\/a>\u00a0in autonomous weapons research and development. The U.S. alone\u00a0budgeted US$18 billion<\/a>\u00a0for autonomous weapons between 2016 and 2020.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, human rights and\u00a0humanitarian organizations<\/a>\u00a0are racing to establish regulations and prohibitions on such weapons development. Without such checks, foreign policy experts warn that disruptive autonomous weapons technologies will dangerously destabilize current nuclear strategies, both because they could radically change perceptions of strategic dominance,\u00a0increasing the risk of preemptive attacks<\/a>, and because they could become\u00a0combined with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons<\/a>\u00a0themselves.<\/p>\n As a\u00a0specialist in human rights<\/a>\u00a0with a focus on the\u00a0weaponization of artificial intelligence<\/a>, I find that autonomous weapons make the unsteady balances and fragmented safeguards of the nuclear world \u2013 for example, the U.S. president\u2019s minimally constrained\u00a0authority to launch a strike<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 more unsteady and more fragmented.<\/p>\n Lethal errors and black boxes<\/strong><\/p>\n I see four primary dangers with autonomous weapons. The first is the problem of misidentification. When selecting a target, will autonomous weapons be able to distinguish between hostile soldiers and 12-year-olds playing with toy guns? Between civilians fleeing a conflict site and insurgents making a tactical retreat?<\/p>\n