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this is al jazeera, these you top stories. explosions have shaken ukraine's capital less than an hour into the new year. they follow it. barrels of missiles strikes by russia, targeting cheese and other cities. the 1st blast of 2023 had 2 districts leaders around the world, a paying tribute to form a po benedict. the 16th was died at the age of $95.00. he led the catholic church for just on the 8 years and stepped on a 2013 because of how his success of pope francis said he was a gift to the world. bilingualism delays quest a mom in to at this moment our thoughts go to our dearest hope, benedict, the 16th who left us this morning. it was, it is with emotion that we remember this person so noble, so kind of young and we feel in our heart such gratitude, gratitude to god for having gifted him to the church and the world. gratitude to him all the good he has accomplished. and especially for his witness of faith and

prayer, especially in these last years of his retired life is only god knows the value and strength of his intercession of his sacrifices offered the good of the church. in the north, chris leaders from the thing, an exponential increase in the production of nuclear weapons, state media, se kim john and has ordered new intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear capability. as you won't see, all spelled out cost us in south korean pulses. canada and australia have become the latest countries to pay over $19.00 checks on travelers from china. january the 5th, they'll have to show a negative p. c on test before departure. oral care has gone a step further, imposing a ban on all arrivals from china. security has been beefed up in brazil's capital before the swearing in president elect louis industrially to silver on sunday. last week's fall bomb plots by a supporter of variables and are the outgoing leader,

has rate tension in brasilia. as $2022.00, which we reflect on the major story good shape. tell one julie, now to 0. 30, read the in depth. looking back at this year and the have to 2022. i artificial intelligence is the future of war. tech giants and governments are already partnering to produce lethal autonomous weapons. but will these so called killer robots unleash a new kinds of danger? okay, they make war safer. as supporters claim that conversation is coming up. but 1st, with recent world events, the danger of nuclear warheads, spite nuclear weapons are the most dangerous munitions on earth, with the potential to kill millions, to level cities and destroy the natural environment for generations to come. yet even with this knowledge, we are no closer to achieving total nuclear non proliferation. in fact,

the topic continues to be debated. wise that will ask this was headliner, beatrice fit executive director of the 2017 nobel peace prize recipients the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. ah, beatrice fin, executive director of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. i can thank you so much for joining us on up front. i can was a driving force behind the 2017 treaty own the prohibition of nuclear weapons to outlaw nuclear weapons entirely for which your organization was awarded a nobel peace prize. 122 countryside onto the treaty, but none of the nuclear powers did, nor did any of the nato countries. and since then, we've seen russian nuclear forces on a high alert level in the u. s. withdrawal from the ran deal increases in india in pakistan's nuclear warhead stockpiles, and a bunch of other recent developments which are the main countries in the world

right now preventing the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. well, thank you very much for having me and i can. yeah, i mean the treaty was a great accomplishment, but of course the big elephant in the room, of course, is that the 9 new chrome states and the other countries that are participating in exercising and practicing and hosting new come up as of the territory have not get during the treaty and this was really the reason why we pushed for this to to happen because we saw that things were getting worse. with huge monetization programs from the nuclear. i'm states, all of them are upgrading and increasing the nuclear arsenals and much more a nationalistic tendency. they are threatening each other much more, and that's kind of arms face that is happening right now. and of course, now we see how russia and basically threatening the world to use nuclear weapon if anyone interferes with it's invasion of ukraine. so this is really a very serious moment,

but it's also exactly why we pushed this treaty or having these weapons wherever we will see them being used. eventually we see a very dangerous situation right now. the risk of nuclear produce has increased. i'm not saying that it's likely to be used, but i think we have to be aware that we are pushing closer and closer to that point where it's been actually going to be used. and we have to drastically change. and it is the nuclear on states, and it's the nuclear allied states and nato, for example, that really have to leave this charge because we cannot be this vulnerable for one person in the world anymore. well, let's talk about one of those nuclear arms states. russian. president vladimir putin actually ordered nuclear forces to be put on a high alert level. ok, what in your estimation is the likelihood of nuclear war? i wouldn't say that it's likely i still hope that the threshold for using nuclear weapons remains very, very high for all countries. but the more i see, of course, the war developing in ukraine and seeing the threats doesn't paint

a great picture for what we could imagine happening in ukraine as well. and also sort of that a very irrational leader under a lot of pressure feeling like there's no way out for him. i'm very worried about this. i'm also very worried about accidents. mistakes, things that we didn't expect could happen. we just saw a few weeks ago in the, our mistakenly launched a missile on pakistan by accident. and having these situations happening right now under these tension. if that would have happened between say, a u. s. base and russia person, i mean the consequence, it could be opposite of the pedestal that we could stumble into nuclear war. and of course we see the situations like north korea testing missiles. icbm again is south korea saying that he wants nuclear weapons. we've seen bela roo, say that they could station russia new, come up on the territory. we've seen poland say a we could such station american to come up as an us. there is so many variables

here and so many uncertain situation. and we have just being so vulnerable for just relying on these people, mainly men to always get, invite to never make a mistake to always behave rationally and basically putting the faith of our entire humanity in the hands of someone like put in and just hope for the best it's absolutely unsustainable. escalation has been happening for a while now in 2019 president, trump also withdrew the u. s. from the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty or the i n f, which marked the 1st time that both the u. s. and russia had agreed to actually reduce their nuclear arsenals. in fact, when this happened, you stated a quote, trump has fired the starting pistol on cold war 2. so to what extent that is moved by the us undermine nuclear disarmament. and in perhaps even compromised, global nuclear security. i mean, we've seen this has been a trend of the last 10 years. we've seen the dismantling of international legal

instruments. we've seen violation of international instrument on one side, but from many different sites. we saw trump withdrawal from the i n s t b from the van via which the russia violates a lot of these kind of instruments. we've seen them barley, the chemical weapons convention as well. we, we've seen a really negative turn and then you add this very kind of trend of nationalistic to match, show leaders threatening sort of rhetoric an arms race, massive investments in nuclear weapons. and you get the kind of tension and i think that this is exactly what we want about like if we continue down this path, we are on very dangerous territory. and i think that it's not just one decision here and there that you know, makes it so dangerous, many different overtime, a complete deportation, depreciation of disarmament, diplomacy of multilateralism, working together and seeing actually reduction of nuclear arsenals as increasing global security. and in the meantime,

you have the rest of the world without nuclear weapons feeling at hostages in this kind of situation. i think that there's a lot of countries around the world now looking at the situation like, do they just decide over the fate of my country to do we have a say in this, and that's exactly what the treaty or the prohibition on nuclear weapons is about taking control for other countries to say actually we have to get to disarmament. we have to band and eliminate these weapons. let's talk a little bit about the iran deal because talks have resumed to implement the around the also known as the j p. o. a. when trump withdrew from the deal in 202800, excuse me, you called it disastrous. and you said it was essentially a pretext for the u. s. to wage war on iran. do you anticipate a return to the iran deal and from a global security standpoint? what's at stake if the deal fails? well, when the trump administration withdrew from the treaty, it had a very sort of, i think so malicious intent with that it was

a functioning deal. it really had strict verification and sure that iran was not developing nuclear weapons. and the u. s. just intentionally sabotaged that, but this standard that was in the round, it was the highest that we've ever seen. an international agreement with verification on nuclear energy facilities. and the i e, a verified that iran was implementing it. they are not developing nuclear plants. we know what they're doing. so i think that was just intentionally trying to portray the treaty as bad when it was actually a very high standard treaty. and it was really a huge diplomatic achievement to get it. so when it was broken, of course, it's really hard to put these things back together and you have undermined just from iran from all the other countries that were part of this treaty. so i think it's a, it's a real, it's a really good sign that these countries are still trying very hard to get it back together to get a treaty back together. and i think that it shows a commitment from all sides. and i really hope that they will,

but will succeed. now, proponents of deterrence, they argue that the best way to prevent nuclear war is to build a ban nuclear arsenal on both sides of a conflict. so that their use would lead to the mutually assured destruction of every one of the language is always being used. you, on the other hand, argue that the best way to prevent nuclear war is to make sure that there are no such weapons. to begin with. how is nuclear deterrence theory flawed? and how can we approach disarmament in a way that makes the world's safer? i mean, new to deterrence theory is it's so strange, right? because it's like it requires all obese before assumptions that we do. first, it requires that everyone with nuclear weapons forever is always rational and always takes by division. but it also requires a certain level of irrationality because when would it be, when would it be rational to start nuclear war and nuclear war full skin if the war

could end commodity as we know what i mean, there will be survivors. but like the world that we know it would be gone. would it ever be rational to do that? i mean that's collected suicide. would a person like bite and ever feel like that's the right decision to make? probably not, so you would have to, in order for the chance to even work, you have to be irrational. and then you have this idea that the opponent would also make divide assumption about 2 bases. would it be irrational too about, obviously defending nuclear war here. but would it be irrational to launch a nuclear weapon if the other side didn't have one? well that i mean, if you want to mass motor la civilians like sure. and i think that that's also where this, this theory kind of fails. and we see it now is happening in ukraine food and isn't using his nuclear arsenal to protect russia. he's using it to be able to invade a country without nuclear weapons and saying if anyone tries to help, if anyone tries to interfere with my invasion, i will use nuclear weapons. so basically,

and countryside united states are limited in his option. what they can do to, to help the cranium, because it has nuclear weapons. so here is actually a disadvantage. and when you're having this kind of stand up between 2 to nuclear on states, for example, like put in and by done, who would be the most reckless like would, would biden ever convincingly threatened to murder more civilians than put it would, would we believe that would put him to leave that and can we guarantee with all of our, like all the countries in the world rely on someone i put in accumulation, was she or whoever, to always get it right to never cross that line, but still in order for it has to work you have to be prepared to cross that line. so it's a complete contradiction noted deterrence, and they can never guarantee that they won't. it won't happen. so in this all these kind of weird assumptions and that we're making and at the end of the day, mistakes happen, and people act irrationally. people act unpredictably and we can't guarantee that

it won't happen. and i think that the consequences are so massive that we just have to eliminate them. is that before you go there, many of us who are persuaded by your argument for a nuclear disarmament. but some people would say that, given the history of settler colonialism, imperialism, ah, mass genocide, et cetera, that we have no reason to believe that powerful people, powerful nations, whatever, i concede their weaponry, their nuclear arsenals in particular. and that while the idea is good, will never get there what gives you a hope that we can actually have a world without nuclear weapons. what gives me hope is really though we have made a lot of progress internationally in the world when it comes to international law when it comes to human bites. when it comes to rules and how we supposed to behave and it doesn't feel like that in particular, not when you open your twitter account, you get overwhelmed with all the awful things that are happening right now. but you

know, things like you and charter as things like that, you know, the geneva conventions be so you know, not just been flawless as him preventing russia from doing all these things right now. but we are opposing the invasion because they're bul saying that you can read and country and without filters. if we never developed the tools, it would just fair game for everyone to just do whatever. and the biggest countries which would win all those things. and they will do whatever they want, but they can't be me, always do whatever they want. and i think the things like the colonization, for example, seeing how all these country to work, colonized by the, by these type of major powerful countries have become free today. and all their own countries, and that's, you know, they did that despite these countries having weapons, i think that is a way and the powerful have always lost their power when the majority has risen up and stood against that. that that's when you can really make change happen. so the treaty, prohibition on the us is really all way of creating a high pollution on,

in the nuclear structure that we created like no longer can these 5 countries and the other 4 that has them as well, like just dictate the terms and said this is fine, because we have them and you can't have them now where we're changing the game, we're creating new laws and new rules and we're going to demand a different system. better spend, thank you so much for joining me on upfront the our killer robots, the future of war, more technically known as lethal autonomous weapon systems or laws. these robots can operate independently and attack targets without human control. artificial intelligence weapons already been deployed in military conflict, but some war and the war and ukraine could see both sides using autonomous weapons in an unprecedented way. despite human lead attempts to curb development and established international regulation of loss, countries including the u. s. and russia are continuing their unchecked development

of the technology. human rights organizations are campaigning against killer robots . while some military experts argue that they'll make more safer and more efficient . are they right? and are we witnessing the dawn of a new arms race? joining me to discuss this, our, lar nolan, a former google employee in software engineer with the international committee for robot, arms control and matt, math, moody, an artificial intelligence researcher with amnesty international. good to see both of you. thank you for joining me. a laura, i'm going to start with you. the evolution of killer robots has been described as a, quote, potentially seismic event in warfare akin to the invention of gun powder and nuclear bombs. that's a rather staggering characterization. is that when you'd agree with that? absolutely. if not, i mean the invention of gunpowder is something that is actually pretty much formed, that the whole, the whole nature of that they should state the whole way that we live. i don't think the weapons are likely to be thought seismic. i mean,

i think looking at the current context, we live, we're living in a world where people are building these complex weapons which are unproven, their, their utility and their efficacy is completely unproven. i do think that on the weapons are likely to post danger both to both the soldiers themselves. i think there's a very, very high risk of friendly fire incidents. i think there's a high risk of civilian harm. i think there's a very high risk of potentially sparking off the conflict and on an intentional kind of way met. i want to give it to you for a 2nd in terms of the technology of war. are we now going to see a race to who can to see who can build the biggest and most efficient and most destructive killer robot? i do think it's important to note that states are, of course, in competition with each other around thomas weapon systems. i mean, in january 2021 along with c, and it is in rafael bassett, their back systems building and showcasing commercial jones and robot dog, capable official recognition. we've seen in libya in march 2020. the use of various

cargo grounds, which has been developed by turkey mc number of cases in which technologies that are atomic weapon system by definition are being used. however, we said the form of the art arms race might look quite different to what we're expecting. a lot of the technologies that autonomous systems are built on our technologies that are being used in everyday context. in the leasing context. for example, facial recognition for math surveillance, emotional recognition, gate recognition, predictive analytics. these are all tools that we know are being used against, for example, life matter for testers, and have been known to time and time again fail and to augment racially discriminatory policing, and our defacto against international human rights law. so if we're looking for that one terminator to show up at our door, we're maybe looking in the wrong place that argue that what we're actually needing to, to keep an eye out. or are these more on sort of the ways in which these technologies

are starting to play a role in our everyday lives and or how we live. and it seems to me that a big part of that is the growing partnerships between these tech companies and governments. laura, you worked as an engineer for google before residing in 2018 out of protest after you are assigned to work on project maven, which seeks to advanced drone technology for the u. s. military. in recent years, amazon, microsoft and google have us on contracts with the pentagon, while others, including ellen musk have pledge not to develop lethal autonomous weapons. how dangerous are these partnerships? particularly in light of the fact that these companies have the personal information of more than a 1000000000 people around the world. i think i don't like to underline what not just said, which is that. and these are not only military technologies. and there are huge implications here for civil liberties for privacy and for you know, how,

how we live our lives outside. ready warfare context as well. so fundamentally, when you're talking about autonomous weapons, if you want to blow up a bridge, you don't really need not on the weapon. out. almost weapons are fundamentally biped targets that are mobile and not, not for attacking military bases and offer attacking time columns there by people there about people and vehicles that have people in them. and therefore, in these kinds of weapons, they're very intimately banned in surveillance technologies because you need to, to have a lot of weapon. you need to have a technology to know where people are, where people are moving around to understand their behavior. and so we're big tech comes into this is if you think about cloud computing technology, you have a companies like amazon, microsoft, google, they're making a lot of money out of selling commodity cloud computing technology. now surveillance technology is hugely compute intensive. so quite simply, it takes

a lot of c p u cycles, a lot of memory, a lot of expensive computing and infrastructure to run this kind of technology. so there's a huge business opportunity here to build surveillance systems. i think we can see that more and out in the fact that all of the major credit companies have built a p ice for recognizing objects for recognizing people. and this is, as i say, this is very much dual use technology between military and civilian applications. man, let me ask you a question about precision here. us air strikes are notoriously imprecise. they've killed thousands of civilians. for example, there was a joel striking rural yemen in 2013 that killed at least a dozen people at a wedding procession all civilians. according to human rights groups, a 2016 us air strike in northern syria killed at least 120 civilians could a our technology at least reduce deadly incidence like this. absolutely not. humans are not just numbers and i think the systems do process human beings as if

they were, we know from research that joy will and we intend to get routed a while ago. that in many cases, facial recognition systems are incapable of identifying especially black women with a rate of anywhere between $60.00 to $70.00, to sometimes 90 percent, depending on the study that you look at. now even if you were to make those systems 99 percent accurate, let's say that you could, you're still dealing with systems that are inherently existing in the context of discrimination, institutional racism, massage any etc. and so i think it's important that we learn how would that be different than the current systems of policing or surveillance, or education or anything else we have. so it would double down in a meant those existing crises and also my existing forms of discrimination. so we don't want to have a system in which say you have these discriminatory practices and put them on steroids. that's exactly the opposite of what we want to do. and so what we need is

in fact a legally binding instrument, which is what the stock killer robot campaign is calling or, and what we need is also a global ban on remote biometric surveillance technologies. which figure in to these autonomous weapon systems. i did want to make a quick gun point regarding what matt said before that and about the dangers of back accountability regulation and why it makes a difference that we might take an imperfect process that is executed by human beings and automated. so one of the great problems that we have, and i guess with both preserving our civil rights in a free society and also with overseeing and national humanitarian law and ensuring that the, the international both of warfare are respected. it is, but we have a lack of transparency. and one of the things that we see is when we also made a process, we as much as we make it less flexible and we also tend to make it much less transparent. if we start taking the logic of what we're doing in warfare or am in

our society, i'm starting coding it in, in, in processing algorithms and processes that are very inscrutable that can be inspected by few people. and that are controlled by a few people. then we, we do, we do risk things spinning out of control and ways that we do not want laura, there's also an argument to be made that it's too late, right? the most powerful nations are supporting this stuff. the technologies are already in use u. s. national security commission co chair, rapid work said a, a i in warfare is already happening. so if it's already happening and again, the most powerful people are behind it. what do we do in the 28? i think that that is a very, very yes met, listed kind of approach to, to take to us look at do for weapons. they were used in watching 45 when they hadn't been use since. so it's possible to refrain from the use of weapons after

guard development. there is also been a very, very strong norm, has emerged against chemical weapons and also biological weapons. front of course, does a very, very strong emerging norm against the use of landlines because of the, the hard but they do civilians. so i think it's, i don't, i don't think it's correct to say that there's no hope. the weapons never beat up weapons are never bound or the state never refrained from using particular types of buttons that it's never to. but we have to put human beings and not data point the head of the agenda. and as we've seen climate time again with even issues of check as soon as enough people are aware of the kind of harm the systems are causing, they will inevitably move the needle on what they seem permissible. and what we need to do in this particular moment, move the needle on how permissible we are finding thomas weapons system. and you know, from where we're standing. absolutely acceptable. laura math, thank you so much for joining me on upfront. all right,

that is our show upfront. we'll be back next week the for science this, the evidence is irrefutable. but america's climate change denial stubbornly mistrust of the fact. despite soaring temperatures, raging wild fires and shrinking water reserves, the world's largest economy, it still splits along ideological lines. so can it ever reach consensus to avoid catastrophe? climate wars on a jesse, you know, are they protected? all profit is a free speech mosque is showing us how vulnerable space is online truly are when they are controlled by billionaires of lago,

documenting facts on the ground. i'm not a journalist, people trust individuals, more than the news or a purveyor of the state line. how can you show the destruction of a political war and still be a political unchecked? the media can distort narratives and reshape realities. the listening post keeps watch on al jazeera. my name is the shop, that's net. i'm just a simple girl with big genes and this and to do something big in the world of cinema. one has to be mad to actually come to bon b and leave the gene. most of the artists in one b lloyd, in general, they get paid forwarded. this is where exploitation comes, the word expert. if we get paid 90 days after that the biggest off the shoot, i don't even included that. we for the longest that was supporting character and i'm happy in order to go to that. that's all right,

but i don't get any dialogue. so question mark, you find the supporting character even up to the junior art is lately known as a vague didn't like, you know, and it shouldn't be that too. i always don't myself that sunday i me famous blue ah explosions and ukraine's capital to start the new year just hours off to a barrage of miss solid tax by russia. ah.