WASHINGTON: Artificial intelligence is rapidly expanding its role in warfare at the expense of human judgement, the head of the UN’s independent disarmament research institute has warned, as Pakistan cautioned that advances in AI and the life and chemical sciences were creating new and unpredictable risks.
In a briefing at UN headquarters, Robin Geiss, director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), posed a stark question to the international community: “Are we going to let machines target and kill human beings?”
He warned that military AI was increasingly “on track to crowding out human decision-making,” including in the nuclear domain. AI is already being used for intelligence analysis, target identification, drone operations and cyberattacks. Its expanding role is accelerating battlefield operations, shortening the time between identifying and striking targets, and allowing forces to engage unprecedented numbers of targets each day.
Mr Geiss cautioned that the opacity of many evolving AI systems heightened the risks of errors, miscalculations and unintended escalation. As these tools become easier to use, non-state actors could also acquire the capacity to conduct increasingly sophisticated military operations.
Geopolitical convergence
Mr Geiss acknowledged that geopolitical competition remained a serious obstacle to regulating military AI, but said concerns about its risks were increasingly shared across political divides.
In September, the United States proposed an AI “notification mechanism” with China, under which the world’s two largest military spenders could alert each other to AI-related incidents threatening national security.
He also pointed to growing support for UN Secretary General António Guterres’s calls for stronger regulation of military AI and a legally binding treaty on lethal autonomous weapon systems. UNIDIR is seeking to advance multilateral cooperation through its Centre of Excellence on AI, Peace and Security, which is due to launch a new forum on Thursday covering AI, international peace and security, and the military domain. Mr Geiss described it as the first and only forum of its kind within the UN system.
The initiative will focus on developing voluntary guidelines for responsible industry practices in military AI, establishing a common security lexicon to clarify concepts such as autonomy and safety, and addressing the potential misuse of AI by non-state armed groups in operational planning, execution and logistics.
The effort comes amid repeated UN warnings that technological progress must not cross what the secretary-general has called a “moral red line.”
Pakistan stresses cooperation
Separately, Pakistan highlighted the convergence of AI, synthetic biology and advances in the life and chemical sciences during a thematic debate on other weapons of mass destruction at the UN General Assembly’s First Committee.
“Science is moving faster than governance,” Counsellor Syed Atif Raza told the committee, warning that emerging technologies were creating novel risks.
Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2026
