Geneva, Switzerland, Aug 6, 2021 / 12:00 pm
The Vatican said this week that the potential use of “swarms of ‘kamikaze’ mini-drones” could pose a threat to civilians.
An Aug. 3 statement by the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said that the devices could attack the wrong target in urban settings.
“A specific potential challenge that this delegation wishes to underline relates to the possibility of the use of swarms of ‘kamikaze’ mini-drones, that is, swarms of weapon systems endowed with autonomous capabilities,” it said, alluding to Japanese kamikaze pilots who launched suicide attacks in World War II.
“The use of swarms in urban areas could lead to high risks for civilians. If functioning without any direct human supervision, such systems could make mistakes in identifying the intended targets due to some unidentified ‘bias’ induced by their ‘self-learning capabilities’ developed from a limited set of data samples.”