Abstract
Purpose of ReviewTo provide readers with a compact account of ongoing academic and diplomatic debates about autonomy in weapons systems, that is, about the moral and legal acceptability of letting a robotic system to unleash destructive force in warfare and take attendant life-or-death decisions without any human intervention.Recent FindingsA précis of current debates is provided, which focuses on the requirement that all weapons systems, including autonomous ones, should remain under meaningful human control (MHC) in order to be ethically acceptable and lawfully employed. Main approaches to MHC are described and briefly analyzed, distinguishing between uniform, differentiated, and prudential policies for human control on weapons systems.SummaryThe review highlights the crucial role played by the robotics research community to start ethical and legal debates about autonomy in weapons systems. A concise overview is provided of the main concerns emerging in those early debates: respect of the laws of war, responsibility ascription issues, violation of the human dignity of potential victims of autonomous weapons systems, and increased risks for global stability. It is pointed out that these various concerns have been jointly taken to support the idea that all weapons systems, including autonomous ones, should remain under meaningful human control (MHC). Main approaches to MHC are described and briefly analyzed. Finally, it is emphasized that the MHC idea looms large on shared control policies to adopt in other ethically and legally sensitive application domains for robotics and artificial intelligence.
Highlights
Robotics has extensively contributed to modify defense systems
This review provides a general survey of the AWS debate, focusing on the meaningful human control (MHC) turning point and its ethical and legal underpinnings
Arkin’s own research on military applications of robotics was inspired by a vision of “ethically restrained” autonomous weapons systems that are capable of abiding “by the internationally agreed upon Laws of War” better than human warfighters
Summary
Robotics has extensively contributed to modify defense systems. Significant examples from the recent past include teleoperated robots detecting and defusing explosive devices (e.g., PackBot) [1], in addition to unmanned vehicles for reconnaissance and combat missions, operating on the ground (e.g., Guardium [2] or TALON [3]) or in the air
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