Latest in Autonomous weapon systems
The update to the 2012 directive provides clarity and establishes transparent governance and policy, rather than making substantial changes.
To prevent an AI-enabled arms race resulting in semiautonomous or fully autonomous nuclear weapons, the U.S. and other nuclear-armed states need to negotiate a non-proliferation treaty sooner rather than later.
On Jan. 25, the DoD updated its directive on “Autonomy in Weapons Systems,” the guiding document for U.S. development, implementation, and supervision of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems.
For Lawfare readers interested in law and regulation of autonomous weapon systems (AWS), we’re pleased to note our new essay, recently posted to SSRN, “Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, and Their Regulation Under International Law.” It appears as a chapter in a just-published volume, The Oxford Handbook of Law, Regulation, and Technology, edited by Rog
Last month I attended an outstanding workshop at the University of Pennsylvania’s newly-established Perry World House on a topic that (as far as I can tell) has not received the attention it should: the intersection of emerging technologies with globalization.
Congratulations to Dustin Lewis, Gabriella Blum, and Naz Modirzadeh on the publication, just a few weeks ago, of their exciting new book, War-Algorithm Accountability.
Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School have released their latest report regarding autonomous weapon systems: Precedent for Preemption: The Ban on Blinding Lasers as a Model for a Killer Robots Prohibition. While new regulation is needed, the report fails to address crucial distinctions between the successful ban on permanently blinding lasers and the proposed prohibition on autonomous weapon systems.
In writing about autonomous weapon systems (AWS) and the law of armed conflict, we have several times observed the similarities between programming AWS and programming other kinds of autonomous technologies, as well as the similarities of ethical issues arising in each. Machine decision-making is gradually being deployed in emerging technologies as different as self-driving cars and highly automated aircraft, and many more will join them in such areas as elder-care machines and robotic surgery.