The US and Russia jointly advocated for relaxed control over weapons based on artificial intelligence. This was reported on Saturday, September 26, by The Washington Post, citing sources in diplomatic circles. The discussion took place during a UN meeting in early September in Geneva, where hundreds of diplomats discussed the first global agreement on the use of autonomous weapons of mass destruction. According to the publication, on the last day of negotiations, representatives from the US and Russia spent 15 hours refining the text of the document in a closed session. Sources from The Washington Post report that provisions regarding the reliability and predictability of such weapons were removed from the draft agreement, as well as requirements to consider ethical aspects when using AI systems for military purposes. Additionally, Russian and American diplomats succeeded in having a clause removed from the final version that required a human to verify military targets identified by AI before a strike. The closed session took place without UN cameras or representatives from civil society. Changes to the text of the agreement were made by the American and Russian delegations so quickly that other participants in the meeting could not keep up with the editing process, The Washington Post writes. ## ## UN Negotiations Currently Have No Legal Force According to Verity Coyle, deputy director of the Human Rights Watch arms division, the weakening of rules would mean that "machines could make life-and-death decisions without human oversight." She added that this would lead to an increase in civilian casualties, a decrease in accountability for war crimes, and a shift towards more risky automated warfare. Formally, the UN negotiations currently have no binding legal force: countries are still trying to determine whether the draft agreement can be turned into an official mandate or international treaty in the future. The next meeting of the countries is scheduled for November in Geneva. In December 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted the first resolution on lethal autonomous weapons by an overwhelming majority. This resolution laid the groundwork for the development of a global agreement based on the UN. At that time, only three countries voted against the resolution - Russia, Belarus, and North Korea. As noted by The Washington Post, AI was already used by the company Anthropic to detect and strike nearly 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of the war with Iran. Additionally, Israel is also widely applying AI in military operations in the Gaza Strip.
