A GOOGLE engineer who was on Project Maven – a controversial AI programme that uses machine learning to sort through millions of hours of drone footage to help systems distinguish people from their surroundings – quit because she believes a new generation of autonomous weapons – so-called killer robots – could accidentally start a war or cause mass atrocities.

Laura Nolan has also called for such autonomous weapons to be outlawed by the same type of international treaty that bans chemical weapons.

She has joined the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, has briefed UN diplomats in New York and believes “any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous.”