Panel discussion today on implications of autonomous weapons systems: Killer robots

The Sri Lanka Campaign to Stop Killer Robots; a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, has announced a panel discussion on the implications of autonomous weapons systems.

The discussion will explore the necessity and potential for the comprehensive prohibition of autonomous weapons through law, policy, ethics and responsibility.

Incepted in 2012, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that seek to pre-emptively ban the development, production and use of autonomous weapons, and thereby retain meaningful human control over the use of force. The Sri Lankan Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a member of this coalition, shares this collective goal and hopes to create awareness through discourse.

The panel discussion on the implications of autonomous weapons systems will take place on 2 August, at the Sri Lanka Foundation from 3:30 p.m. onwards. The event is open to the public strictly by prior registration, and entrance will be free of charge. Preference will be given to professionals, academics and students in the fields of law and IT.

The panel will comprise of several top professionals in the fields of law and IT including Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana; Founder and Board Member of WSO2, Asanga Ranasinghe; Founder and Executive Director of STAMPEDE, SDGs Tech Accelerator and Yanitra Kumaraguru; Coordinator-Sri Lanka Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo.

All participants will receive a complimentary copy of the publication of ‘The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), Autonomous Weapons and Sri Lanka’, and a souvenir at the event.

Simultaneous translation in Sinhala and Tamil will be available during the event.

Registration could be done via the link on the Facebook event page – ‘AWS – A discussion on the implication of Killer Robots’ or by forwarding the name and NIC number of the participant to [email protected].