A pair of intriguing-and-potentially-linked robot stories made the news this week, with the first being a United Nations report calling on a moratorium for automated killing machines. The report for the UN Human Rights Commission suggests a worldwide ban on the production, assembly, testing and deployment of fully or semi-autonomous weapons until rules can be developed to govern their use.

With United States, Britain, Israel, South Korea and Japan already having such killer robots, the clock is ticking. Removing humans from the decision to institute killing, the report says, could lead to an increase of it.

“Decisions over life and death in armed conflict may require compassion and intuition. Humans — while they are fallible — at least might possess these qualities, whereas robots definitely do not,” it says.