Название: Fighting Machines: Autonomous Weapons and Human Dignity
Автор: Dan Saxon
Издательство: University of Pennsylvania Press
Год: 2022
Страниц: 261
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub, mobi
Размер: 10.1 MB

Lethal autonomous weapons are weapon systems that can select and destroy targets without intervention by a human operator. Fighting Machines explores the relationship between lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS), the concept of human dignity, and international law. Much of this analysis speaks to three fundamental and related problems: When a LAWS takes a human life, is that killing a violation of human dignity? Can states and non-state actors use LAWS in accordance with international law? And are there certain responsibilities of human decision-making during wartime that we should not delegate to machines?

In the book, Dan Saxon argues that the use of LAWS to take human life constitutes a violation of human dignity. Rather than concentrating on the victims of the use of lethal force, Saxon instead focuses on the technology and relevant legal principles and rules to advance several propositions. First, as LAWS operate at increasingly greater speeds, their use will undermine the opportunities for, and the value of, human reasoning and judgment. Second, by transferring responsibility for reasoning and judgment about the use of lethal force to computer software, the use of LAWS violates the dignity of the soldiers, commanders, and law enforcement officers who historically have made such decisions, and, therefore, breaches international law. Third, weapon designs that facilitate teamwork between humans and autonomous systems are necessary to ensure that humans and LAWS can operate interdependently so that individuals can fulfil their obligations under international law"•including the preservation of their own dignity"•and ensure that human reasoning and judgment are available for cognitive functions better suited to humans than machines.

Today, in the twenty-first century, this trend continues and at a faster pace. The U.S. Department of Defense treats the virtual and anonymous environment of cyberspace as a new domain of warfare, subject to offensive and defensive military operations. By congressional mandate, today at least one-third of essential U.S. military aircraft and ground vehicles deployed should be unmanned and “military robots”—controlled by computer software code that we call “artificial intelligence”—may outnumber manned weapons systems by 2030. The F-35, the latest-generation jet fighter plane, “almost certainly will be the last manned strike fighter aircraft the U.S. Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.” The increasing computerization and impersonalization of the modern battlespace relegates many soldiers and commanders to mere adjuncts to the software.

For the purposes of this book, an “autonomous weapon system” is a “weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.” “The key distinction” between autonomous and nonautonomous weapons is that “the machine self-initiates the attack.” This monograph addresses autonomous weapon systems that have the capacity to inflict lethal force because the use of autonomous weapons to target human beings presents the most complex and contentious legal and moral issues.