Elizabeth Minor wants humans to stay in control of AI weapons

Elizabeth Minor has been thinking about the risks of agentic AI and, specifically, autonomous weapons, for years. Minor is the head of policy at Stop Killer Robots, a coalition founded in 2012 in order to ensure that humans maintain control over technology in times of war. That coalition has grown to represent more than 300 organizations in more than 70 countries, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. “This is something that concerns the whole world, so there should be negotiation in international law,” explains Minor. “International law is still important—even if it’s under kind of attack at the moment—and has the restraints of how we draw lines of what’s accessible in the world.” Minor and Stop Killer Robots want to use international law as a tool in the fight against the proliferation of artificial intelligence weapons. Much of her work involves taking meetings at the United Nations, in both New York and Geneva. The organization is seeking an international treaty that can be signed by all states to limit the use of autonomous weapons, much like disarmament and weapons control agreements the international community has already established. [Illustration: Derek Abella] The work of Stop Killer Robots has only gotten more important as AI has, increasingly, been deployed on the battlefield. Minor points to a few examples from recent conflicts, including Israel’s use of target identification during the war in Gaza, and the United States’ invocation of Claude both in its operation to capture Nicolas Maduro and the war in Iran. “Just in the last decade or so, there’s a huge acceleration in trying to develop these tools and . . . integrating them into battlefield use,” explains Minor. “You’ve seen more countries sort of saying that this is a desirable and necessary kind of revolutionary warfare that they’re pursuing, rather than that . . . this is something dangerous that they would never, ever want to do.” This profile is p