UN chief Guterres calls for AI pact to bar killer robots
The Secretary-General told the General Assembly that life-and-death decisions must never pass to machines, and drew a comparison with Cold War nuclear arms control.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday to press for regulation of artificial intelligence. "Let us resolve that life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines," he said. "Killer robots must have no place in our future."
Bloomberg reported that Guterres stepped up his calls for an AI pact to avert what the wire described as a future of rampant corporate power and killer robots. The account clashreport, posting a running transcript of the speech, carried the same lines.
Guterres drew a comparison with nuclear arms control. Strategic rivals at a pivotal moment in the Cold War recognised the need to manage shared existential risks, he said, and built mechanisms to reduce misunderstandings and prevent catastrophe. Artificial intelligence, he said, demands the same.
He also said children must never become test subjects for unregulated systems. He named no country, no company and no system, and set out no treaty text, timetable or enforcement mechanism. Whether the appeal could reach a negotiation is not addressed in either account.