Future AI weapons such as drones should have moral code, says former UK spy chief

Key points

• Drones will need to be programmed with moral guidelines as AI-driven decision making reduces human involvement in autonomous warfare, according to a former UK spy chief.
• David Omand told the Guardian that he had changed his mind on unmanned weapons systems, more than a decade after concluding that autonomous drones could not comply with international humanitarian law.
• The former head of GCHQ – the UK’s listening agency – said he now believed AI could create a “moral” framework for unmanned weapons that could differentiate between combatants and civilians.
• Omand said he been swayed by the “speeding-up” of modern warfare, as shown by the deployment of weapons such as drones and hypersonic missiles, and the emergence of generative AI which had given states a “potentially ethical way” of allowing drones to operate under morally compliant systems.
• “My call is to really get some work done on this, so that we’re not...