Autonomous weapons: Washington and Moscow have withdrawn human scrutiny of targets from the UN draft text

On the last day of negotiations in Geneva, the American and Russian delegations abolished the requirement for human proofreading before a strike, as well as the requirements of reliability and ethics.

Hundreds of diplomats met in early September in a United Nations conference room in Switzerland to move towards the first international framework for lethal autonomous weapons. At the end of a final session of about fifteen hours, the document came out significantly lighter.

Three safeguards have been removed from the project: the requirement that a human be examine a target designated by an artificial intelligence system before a strike is launched, the requirement that these systems behave in a predictable and reliable manner, and the consideration of ethical considerations. According to diplomats present, it was the American and Russian representatives who carried out these deletions.

The Geneva text does not have the force of a binding treaty. States will have to decide on the next step in the process at the review conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, scheduled to take place in Geneva from 16 to 20 November 2026.