The World Council of Churches (WCC) is among the signatories to an interfaith statement expressing ‘concern over the insidious development of weapons systems that lack meaningful human control’ (so called ‘killer robots’).

The WCC, working with the Roman Catholic peace group Pax Christi Northern California and Japanese Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai International, released the statement on February 4, the first International Day of Human Fraternity.

The statement, entitled ‘A Plea For Preserving Our Shared Humanity’, calls for ‘an urgent and firm rejection of the development of fully autonomous weapons’ and demands that ‘the human person must never be reduced to a set of numbers, degraded of the dignity which sets us apart from machines’.

It also warns that ‘the surrender of life-and-death decisions to robots would represent a serious abdication of human responsibility for the content and consequences of one’s actions’.

The statement concludes: “Instead of placing our faith in technologies that unaccountably kill, maim and destroy human life, we devote ourselves to building cultures of peace, non-violence, dialogue, and mutual co-operation, respecting the dignity of difference.”

(WCC)