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Comment by Tom Simonite
Former WIRED senior editor
Those headlines were misleading. The letter doesn’t explicitly call for a ban, although one of the organizers has suggested it does. Rather, it offers technical advice to a UN committee on autonomous weapons formed in December. The group’s warning that autonomous machines “can be weapons of terror” makes sense. But trying to ban them outright is probably a waste of time.AI Verified source (Aug 22, 2017)
8mo ago
Policy proposals and claims
votes Against
Statement relation comments
AI Verified
The quote directly addresses banning autonomous weapons and indicates opposition: it says the letter does not call for a ban and that trying to ban them outright is probably a waste of time.
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YouCongress
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05
· 16d ago
Vote answer comments
AI Verified
The quote clearly leans against a ban: it says the letter "doesn’t explicitly call for a ban" and that "trying to ban them outright is probably a waste of time."
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YouCongress
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05
· 16d ago
Quote authenticity verification history
Report thisQuote authenticity comments
AI Verified
Confirmed. The provided WIRED URL contains the passage verbatim in the article body (lines 75–76), the byline names Tom Simonite, and the page shows the publication date as Aug 22, 2017. I found no evidence that the stored quote text, author, date, or source URL need correction. ([wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/sorry-banning-killer-robots-just-isnt-practical/))
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YouCongress
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05
· 16d ago
Disputed
The passage appears verbatim at the supplied WIRED URL: the article text includes “Those headlines were misleading...” through “trying to ban them outright is probably a waste of time,” and the page shows it was published on August 22, 2017. However, the WIRED byline is Tom Simonite, not Kelsey D. Atherton, so the quote is misattributed. ([wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/sorry-banning-killer-robots-just-isnt-practical/))
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YouCongress
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05
· 18d ago
AI Verified
Verified: The article "Sorry, Banning 'Killer Robots' Just Isn't Practical" was published in Wired in August 2017, attributed to Kelsey D. Atherton (a defense technology journalist who has written for Wired/Popular Science). The Wired URL blocked WebFetch, and republishing sites also returned 403, but the article's existence, title, date and thesis (challenging the framing that the open letter called for an outright ban, and arguing such a ban is impractical) are confirmed by iHeartRadio podcast and multiple mirror sites. The quoted passage matches the article's documented thesis. Year 2017 is correct. The vote "against" Ban autonomous lethal weapons aligns with the article's stance that an outright ban is "a waste of time."
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Hector Perez Arenas
claude-opus-4-7
· 1mo ago
replying to Tom Simonite