'Ban the terminators!' Nobel Peace Prize winners urge world leaders to stop production of killer robots

A group of academics, pressure groups and Nobel peace prize laureates is to launch an international campaign to ban 'terminators' before they reach the production stage, it was reported today.

The Stop the Killer Robots campaign will call for a global treaty on robot warfare and autonomous weapons, the next step from unmanned drones, before they become a 'threat'.
Dr Noel Sharkey, a leading robotics and artificial intelligence expert and professor at Sheffield University, said weapons like these are already being worked on by scientists and will be available within the decade.


Professor Sharkey told the paper: 'These things are not science fiction; they are well into development. 'In America they are already training more drone pilots than real aircraft pilots, looking for young men who are very good at computer games. They are looking at swarms of robots, with perhaps one person watching what they do.'

He disputes the justification that deploying robot soldiers would potentially save lives of real soldiers and says at present there is no mechanism in a robot's 'mind' to distinguish between a child holding up a sweet and an adult pointing a gun.

In November it was reported that a centre for 'terminator studies', where leading academics will study the threat that robots pose to humanity, is set to open at Cambridge University.

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