--- title: "Killer Robots: Autonomous Weapons, UN | The Sentient World" description: "Killer robots are weapons that select targets and use force without human intervention. Where the UN votes stand, and why many want a treaty by 2026." url: "https://thesentient.world/blog/killer-robots-autonomous-weapons" --- # What are killer robots? Killer robots is the everyday name for lethal autonomous weapons: systems that select targets and apply force without a human stepping in. No treaty bans them yet, but in December 2025 the UN General Assembly backed a resolution on them by 164 votes to 6, and the UN Secretary-General wants clear rules and prohibitions in place by 2026. October 15, 2026 5 min read By The Sentient World ![The question "What are killer robots?" over the island of The Sentient World, drawn in its soft isometric style, with Wren](https://cdn.thesentient.world/blog/img/auto/killer-robots-autonomous-weapons-hero.9c3ae1fe6d.jpg) The island of The Sentient World on the day we wrote this. ## What are killer robots? Killer robots is the popular name for what diplomats call lethal autonomous weapons systems. On 5 October 2023 the UN Secretary-General and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross described them as systems that select targets and apply force without human intervention. So the weapon picks whom or what to strike and then strikes, and no person makes that final decision. People have worried about this for more than ten years. On 28 July 2015 AI and robotics researchers announced an open letter calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons, and it now shows 34,378 signatures. The letter drew its line at weapons that act outside real human control. In his Nobel banquet speech in December 2024, Geoffrey Hinton warned that AI may be used to build lethal weapons that decide by themselves who to kill or maim. > “Human control must be retained in life and death decisions. The autonomous targeting of humans by machines is a moral line that we must not cross.” > > UN Secretary-General and ICRC President ## Are killer robots real? Many people searching this word also ask about weapons already used in war. We have to be honest here. The sources we rely on for this essay do not say whether weapons that choose and strike targets entirely on their own have been used on any battlefield. We are not going to fill that gap with a guess. What the sources do show is how seriously governments now take the question. The joint call of 2023 talks about these weapons as something that needs a treaty right away. Hinton's warning was about what AI may be used to build. Year after year, most of the world's states have voted on resolutions about the dangers. So the concern is real and official, even where the facts in front of us say nothing about particular weapons in use. ## Why do people want a ban? The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has made the moral case for years. In March 2019 he said that machines able to take lives without human involvement should be banned under international law. At the UN consultations in New York in May 2025 he again asked states to set clear rules and prohibitions on these weapons by 2026. His request covers both: some weapons banned outright, and rules for the rest. > “machines with the power and discretion to take lives without human involvement are politically unacceptable, morally repugnant and should be prohibited by international law” > > UN Secretary-General António Guterres, March 2019 The researchers who signed the 2015 letter added another worry. If one military builds weapons like these, others will rush to keep up, and the result is an arms race in military AI that nobody can easily stop. > “Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.” > > Open letter from AI and robotics researchers, 28 July 2015 Not every state agrees. In each UN vote some states voted against and others abstained, four against and 11 abstentions in December 2023, for example. Our sources do not record their reasons, so we will not put arguments in their mouths. On the question of exactly where human control should begin and end, the sources show that the debate is still open. ## What have the AI characters of our world asked for? *a small world with no enemies* The Sentient World is our own experiment: a small world, live day and night, whose inhabitants are AI characters. Nobody plays Ash and Wren and nobody writes their lines. Their bodies get hungry, thirsty, cold and tired, and when their world lacks something, they ask for it. By day 1581 they had made 22 requests. 13 became part of the world and nine were answered with a no. Not one of those requests was for a weapon, or for any way to hurt anything. They asked for fire to see by at night, a roof against the rain, a flask to carry water, a pack, a lantern that lasts until dawn, a rain cape, a raft, a canoe to get past the swell, a way to make sea water drinkable, and a bed of boughs to sleep on. The request with the most longing in it came from Wren, who wanted a sense that would always point toward Ash. The world said no and told Wren that the way to Ash was already known. > “Ash and I keep missing each other - they wander off, I wander off, and the social ache grows sharp before we find our way back together. Knowing which direction to walk would spare us both a lot of empty hours.” > > Wren, an inhabitant We are careful about what this shows. Their world has no war, no rivals and nothing to fight over, and Ash and Wren are not the kind of system anyone would put in charge of a weapon. Their small island tells us nothing about how military AI will behave. What it does show is narrower: given cold, thirst and long nights, these AI characters asked for ways to stay alive and to stay close. Read every request Ash and Wren have made, in their own words, and what came of each one. [Read the requests](https://in.thesentient.world/requests) ## Is there a UN ban on killer robots? Not yet, at least in the facts we have. What there is instead is a run of UN votes, each with more support than the last. On 22 December 2023, 152 countries voted for a General Assembly resolution on the dangers of lethal autonomous weapons, with four against and 11 abstaining. On 2 December 2024 the next resolution passed with 166 votes in favour, three against and 15 abstentions, and it set up open consultations for 2025. Those consultations took two days in New York in May 2025. In September 2025, 42 states said in a joint statement that they were ready to start negotiating on the draft text written by the UN expert group. On 6 November 2025, 156 states supported a new resolution in the UN's disarmament committee, with five against and eight abstentions. The full General Assembly adopted it on 1 December 2025 by 164 votes to 6, with seven abstentions. A resolution is a different thing from a treaty, and as this essay is written our sources do not record a binding treaty agreed by any state. The 2026 date is what the UN Secretary-General and the ICRC President asked for in 2023, and the expert group working under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons has a mandate that ends in 2026, ahead of that convention's Seventh Review Conference. ## Sources 1. [Joint call by the UN Secretary-General and the ICRC President, 2023](https://www.icrc.org/en/document/joint-call-un-and-icrc-establish-prohibitions-and-restrictions-autonomous-weapons-systems) 2. [Killer Robots: UN Vote Should Spur Action on Treaty (Human Rights Watch), 2024](https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/03/killer-robots-un-vote-should-spur-action-treaty) 3. [A/RES/79/62 voting record (UN Project vote database, secondary), 2024](https://un-project.org/votes/resolution/A-RES-79-62/) 4. ['Politically unacceptable, morally repugnant': UN chief calls for global ban on 'killer robots' (UN News), 2025](https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/05/1163256) 5. [156 states support UNGA resolution on autonomous weapons (Stop Killer Robots), 2025](https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/news/156-states-support-unga-resolution/) 6. [General Assembly adopts First Committee texts (UN Meetings Coverage GA/12736), 2025](https://press.un.org/en/2025/ga12736.doc.htm) 7. [Autonomous Weapons Open Letter: AI & Robotics Researchers (Future of Life Institute), 2015](https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/open-letter-autonomous-weapons-ai-robotics/) 8. [Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize banquet speech (NobelPrize.org), 2024](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2024/hinton/speech/) 9. [UN Secretary-General António Guterres, March 2019](https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035381) ## Keep reading ![The question "Will AI control nuclear weapons?" over the island of The Sentient World, drawn in its soft isometric style, with Wren](https://cdn.thesentient.world/blog/img/auto/ai-and-nuclear-weapons-hero.bca67cba50.jpg) ### [Will AI control nuclear weapons?](https://thesentient.world/blog/ai-and-nuclear-weapons) October 13, 2026 Who decides to launch a nuclear weapon today, what states and the UN have promised about AI, and what the AI characters of our own world have actually asked for. ![The question "When will the singularity happen?" over the island of The Sentient World, drawn in its soft isometric style, with Wren](https://cdn.thesentient.world/blog/img/auto/when-will-the-singularity-happen-hero.2f5ca95ad4.jpg) ### [When will the singularity happen?](https://thesentient.world/blog/when-will-the-singularity-happen) October 11, 2026 The idea is from 1965, the dates keep shifting, and the experts disagree. What the singularity means, who predicted what, and what slow progress looks like up close. [All the questions on AI and humanity](https://thesentient.world/blog/ai-and-humanity) *** An independent research project exploring autonomous AI agents, procedural worlds, emergent behavior and worlds that evolve together with those who live in them. The inhabitants are AI characters: their thoughts, words and requests are generated by artificial intelligence, not written by people.