Susanne Beck

On banning autonomous weapons systems: from deontological to wide consequentialist reasons

This chapter examines the ethical reasons supporting a moratorium and, more stringently, a preemptive ban on autonomous weapons systems (AWS). Discussions of AWS presuppose a relatively clear idea of what it is that makes those systems autonomous. In this technological context, the relevant type of autonomy is task autonomy, as opposed to the personal autonomy, which usually pervades ethical discourse. Accordingly, a weapons system is regarded here as autonomous if it is capable of carrying out the task of selecting and engaging military targets without any human intervention. Since robotic and artificial intelligence technologies are crucially needed to achieve the required task autonomy in most battlefield scenarios, AWS are identified here with some sort of robotic systems. Thus, ethical issues about AWS are strictly related to technical and epistemological assessments of robotic technologies and systems, at least insofar as the operation of AWS must comply with discrimination and proportionality requirements of international humanitarian law (IHL). A variety of environmental and internal control factors are advanced here as major impediments that prevent both present and foreseeable robotic technologies from meeting IHL discrimination and proportionality demands. These impediments provide overwhelming support for an AWS moratorium – that is, for a suspension of AWS development, production and deployment

Autonomous Weapons Systems: Law, Ethics, Policy

The intense and polemical debate over the legality and morality of weapons systems to which human cognitive functions are delegated (up to and including the capacity to select targets and release weapons without further human intervention) addresses a phenomena which does not yet exist but which is widely claimed to be emergent. This groundbreaking collection combines contributions from roboticists, legal scholars, philosophers and sociologists of science in order to recast the debate in a manner that clarifies key areas and articulates questions for future research. The contributors develop insights with direct policy relevance, including who bears responsibility for autonomous weapons systems, whether they would violate fundamental ethical and legal norms, and how to regulate their development. It is essential reading for those concerned about this emerging phenomenon and its consequences for the future of humanity.

Autonomous weapons systems: living a dignified life and dying a dignified death

Introduction The ever-increasing power of computers is arguably one of the defining characteristics of our time. Computers affect almost all aspects of our lives and have become an integral part not only of our world but also of our very identity as human beings. They offer major advantages and pose serious threats. One of the main challenges of our era is how to respond to this development: to make sure computers enhance and do not undermine human objectives. The imposition of force by one individual against another has always been an intensely personal affair – a human being was physically present at the point of the release of force and took the decision that it would be done. It is inherently a highly controversial issue because of the intrusion on peoples bodies and even lives. Ethical and legal norms have developed over the millennia to determine when one human may use force against another, in peace and in war, and have assigned responsibility for violations of these norms. Perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the rise of computer power is to be found in the fact that we are on the brink of an era when decisions on the use of force against human beings – in the context of armed conflict as well as during law enforcement, lethal and non-lethal – could soon be taken by robots. Unmanned or human-replacing weapons systems first took the form of armed drones and other remote-controlled devices, which allowed human beings to be physically absent from the battlefield. Decisions to release force, however, were still taken by human operatives, albeit from a distance. The increased autonomy in weapons release now points to an era where humans will be able to be not only physically absent from the battlefield but also psychologically absent, in the sense that computers will determine when and against whom force is released. The depersonalization of the use of force brought about by remote-controlled systems is thus taken to a next level through the introduction of the autonomous release of force.

Krankheitsbegriff im Kontext der Körperverletzungsdelikte

Nicht erst durch das aufsehenerregende Urteil zur Beschneidung von Knaben des LG Koln ist deutlich geworden, dass die Rechtsanwendung im Bereich der Korperverletzungsdelikte auch nach jahrzehntelangen Debatten immer noch spektakulare Kurswechsel ermoglicht. Gerade im Kontext arztlichen Handelns wird die bisherige Auslegung der Korperverletzungsdelikte immer wieder hinterfragt und neu justiert. Derzeit ist etwa die Tatbestandsmasigkeit rein psychischer Beeintrachtigungen verstarkt in den Fokus geraten, aber auch die Qualifikation von arztlichen Heilbehandlungen als Korperverletzungen und die Konkretisierung bestimmter Voraussetzungen an eine wirksame Einwilligung bleiben weiterhin umstritten.

A human touch: autonomous weapons, DoD Directive 3000.09 and the interpretation of ‘appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force’

Introduction This chapter addresses the legal, policy and military context of the drafting of ‘Autonomy in weapon systems’, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Policy Directive 3000.09. More specifically, the author describes the development and interpretation of Directive 3000.09s requirement that autonomous weapons systems (AWS) be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise ‘appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force’. The chapter compares the Directives standard with another conceptual vision for the development of autonomous functions and systems known as ‘coactive design’ or ‘human–machine interdependence’. Finally, the author argues that the increasing speed of autonomous technology – and the concomitant pressures to advance the related values of military necessity and advantage – eventually will cause the Directives standard of ‘appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force’ to be ineffective and irrelevant. Directive 3000.09 The US government has begun to develop formal – albeit somewhat vague – policies concerning the development and use of semi-autonomous and autonomous weapons. In DoD Directive 3000.09, Ashton B. Carter, deputy secretary of defense for policy, defines ‘autonomous weapon system’ as a ‘weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator’. The drafters of the Directive defined ‘autonomous weapon systems’ as those that select and engage targets because the drafters wanted to focus on the most critical aspect of autonomy – the function of ‘lethality’ – where both human judgment and the law of armed conflict (currently) apply. This chapter adopts this definition of autonomous systems for the purposes of the discussion. The Directive defines ‘semi-autonomous weapon system’ as a ‘weapon system that, once activated, is intended to only engage individual targets or specific target groups that have been selected by a human operator’. Progressively, the categorization of ‘semi-autonomous’ versus ‘autonomous’ is becoming a distinction without a difference as the line between the two becomes more difficult to discern. For example, the US militarys new ‘long range anti-ship missile’ – a weapon the United States contends is semi-autonomous – can fly hundreds of miles after release by an aeroplane and identify and destroy a target without human oversight.

Autonomous weapons systems and transparency: towards an international dialogue

Introduction The international debate around autonomous weapons systems (AWS) has addressed the potential ethical, legal and strategic implications of advancing autonomy, and analysis has offered myriad potential concerns and conceivable benefits. Many consider autonomy in selecting and engaging targets to be potentially revolutionary, yet AWS developments are nascent, and the debates are, in many respects and necessarily, heavily circumscribed by the uncertainty of future developments. In particular, legal assessments as to whether AWS might be used in compliance with the conduct of hostilities rules in international humanitarian law (IHL) are at present largely predicated upon a forecast of future facts, including about the sophistication of weapon technologies, likely capacities and circumstances of use, as well as the projected effectiveness of state control over any use. To conclusively assess legal compliance, detailed information about the AWS as developed or used would be required. However, to date, only minimal attention has been paid to transparency in the AWS context. What kinds of AWS information (if any) should governments share, with whom and on what basis? How will the international community know if autonomy is developed in critical functions and, if AWS are deployed, if they are used in compliance with international law? How might autonomy developments be monitored to enable fact-based legal analysis? Or, if autonomous targeting is prohibited or specifically regulated, how might compliance best be assured? Will existing institutions, norms or requirements for transparency be adequate? These crucial questions have not yet been debated. This chapter explores the challenge of fact-based legal assessments for autonomous systems, and proposes that the international community begin to focus directly and systematically on transparency around AWS development and use. As a step towards deepening an international AWS transparency dialogue, this chapter offers a broad framework for disentangling distinct categories of transparency information, relationships and rationales. Given the lack of an existing well-defined transparency architecture for weapons development and the use of lethal force, transparency discussions should not wait until AWS substantive debates further mature or for the international community to settle on a response to the substantive concerns raised. Rather, transparency should be analysed alongside ongoing legal, ethical and strategic debates. Without attending to transparency, states risk developing autonomy in an environment that lacks information-sharing norms designed to advance lawful weapon use and development, democratic legitimacy and states’ strategic and security interests.