CFR Experts: The Autonomous Weapons Debate Still Has a Definition Problem
mchorowitz · x · 2026-10-21
Michael C. Horowitz (UPenn) and Lauren Kahn (Georgetown CSET) publish a CFR explainer arguing that terms like "killer robots" and "lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS)" are used without any shared consensus definition—Geneva negotiators took a decade to reach only partial agreement.
Key argument: frontier AI safety and autonomous weapons are different problems requiring different policy approaches. Lawmakers should focus not on whether a weapon is autonomous, but on how autonomous it is, with a framework graded accordingly.
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