In an Al Jazeera interview, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said AI must not make life-or-death decisions and called lethal autonomous “killer robots” politically unacceptable, morally repugnant, and illegal under international law without human control.

He cited Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov in 1983, who refused to treat a false missile warning as real—an example that machines can calculate but cannot doubt, pause, or take moral responsibility.

The author ties Guterres to Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas: keep conscience and the human person at the center, “disarm” AI from warfare, and treat peace as disciplined work rather than more efficient automated war.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that AI must not be allowed to make life-or-death decisions, saying autonomous “killer robots” should be forbidden.

Describing such technology as “politically unacceptable and morally repugnant,” the UN chief called once again for a global ban on lethal autonomous weapon systems—machines capable of taking human lives without human oversight.

“Machines that have the power and........

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