Vatican official voices opposition to automated weapons systems

May 15, 2014 - ‎No matter how sophisticated and how many algorithms are programmed to help a drone or other machine make calculations before firing on a target, autonomous weapons systems could never comply with international human rights law, a Vatican official said. "Meaningful human involvement is absolutely essential in decisions affecting the life and death of human beings," Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva, told experts meeting May 13-16 to discuss lethal autonomous weapons systems. Archbishop Tomasi said it was essential "to recognize that autonomous weapon systems can never replace the human capacity for moral reasoning, including in the context of war. The development of autonomous weapon systems will ultimately lead to widespread proliferation," the archbishop said, and "the development of complex autonomous weapon systems which remove the human actor from lethal decision-making is short-sighted and may irreversibly alter the nature of warfare in a less humane direction, leading to consequences we cannot possibly foresee, but that will in any case increase the dehumanization of warfare." (Source: CNS)