[adastra22]

For clarity, cluster munitions and mines are banned because they kill indiscriminately and pose cleanup hazards.

Chemical and biological weapons are banned because, like nukes, escalation of their use results in a scorched earth scenario.

[TeMPOraL]

Also, in case of top tier of biological weapon, even a single strike - or a single accident - has potentially unlimited area of effect, up to and including the entire planet.

Remember COVID-19? Whether you believe in it being natural or a lab leak, it is a good model of how a handling mishap with a mediocre bioweapon would look like.

[adastra22]

Better bioweapons would potentially be more targeted, and/or have reproductive clocks that disable them after a certain number of generations. But you absolutely run the risk of them evolving away from such restrictions.

[ben_w]

My understanding is that such a bioweapon cannot be created with current technology.

We know such things are possible, but we can't actually do them.

[adastra22]

Genetic kill timers are production technology that has already been deployed. There are genetically engineered mosquitoes for example that become unviable after a certain number of generations. The idea being that you mix them into the population, they cross breed and spread their genes, then 10 or 50 generations later, they suddenly are infertile en masse and the whole species dies out.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Very big conventional bombs also have similar effects and yet they are not banned, so that's not the difference. The difference is in the way people are killed.

[master_crab]

Based on this article it looks like AI kills indiscriminately.

[adastra22]

Pedantic but important point: an IDF officer signs off on the strike, and it is carried out by an IDF soldier. The AI is not doing the killing.

The scandal is more that (surprise, surprise) the human oversight isn’t doing its job and the soldiers just follow orders.