Statement from the International Committee for Robot Arms Control: On Panel Challenges to IHL due to increasing degrees of autonomy.

This discussion has been directed almost entirely to considerations of law derived from the principle of jus in bello. We appear to be overlooking, or excluding, considerations of jus ad bellum that arise from the use of autonomous weapons systems. It is in this context that those considerations also typically discussed as matters of international peace and security may be considered to have implications under the law of armed conflict.

We are concerned about the destabilization and chaos that may be introduced into the international system by arms races and the appearance of new, unfamiliar threats. In addition, we are concerned as scientists, about what may happen when nations with an uneasy relationship field increasingly complex, autonomous systems in confrontation with one another.  We know that the interactions of such systems are unpredictable for two reasons.

The first is the inherent error-proneness of complex software even when it is engineered by a single co-operative team. The second is that, in reality, these interacting systems will have been developed by non-cooperating teams, who will do their utmost to maintain secrecy and to ensure that their systems will exploit every opportunity to prevail once hostilities are understood to have commenced or, perhaps, are believed to be imminent. Once hostilities have begun, it may become very difficult for humans to intervene and to reestablish peace, due to the high speed and complexity of events. Niether side would want to risk losing the battle once it had begun

Do these considerations have no implications for the legality of autonomous weapons? Can we consider a war that has been initiated as a result of needless political or military instability, or due to the unpredictable interactions of machines, or escalated out of human control due to the high speed and complexity of events, and not for any human moral or political cause, to be a just war?

Author information

altmann

Jürgen Altmann (PhD) is a physicist and peace researcher (retired) at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Since 1985 he has studied scientific-technical problems of disarmament. An experimental focus is automatic sensor systems for co-operative verification of disarmament and peace agreements and for IAEA safeguards for an underground final repository. The second focus is assessment of new military technologies and preventive arms control, including verification. Studies have dealt with “non-lethal” weapons, civilian and military technologies in aviation, military uses of microsystems technology and of nanotechnology, confidence and security building measures for cyber forces, armed uncrewed vehicles and autonomous weapon systems. He co-founded and chairs the German Research Association for Science, Disarmament and International Security (FONAS) and has authored book chapters on the relationship of natural science, armament and disarmament. He teaches a lecture "Physics and Technology of the Verification of Arms-Limitation Agreements".

For example, they must not be equipped with biological or chemical weapons. In Europe most land and air vehicles are covered by the definitions of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces (CFE Treaty), thus they are limited by numbers and subject to verification. If armed uninhabited vehicles cannot be prohibited outright, then limitations similar to the CFE Treaty are needed in other regions of the world. To avoid dangers for international humanitarian law and military stability, autonomous attack, that is attacks without a human decision in each single case, should be prohibited. Additional prohibitions are needed, among others, for small and very small armed vehicles.

Jürgen Altmann, Arms control for armed uninhabited vehicles: an ethical issue, Ethics and Information Technology, 2013, DOI 10.1007/s10676-013-9314-5. Read the full article  (open access, 17 pages) here.

Author information

altmann

Jürgen Altmann (PhD) is a physicist and peace researcher (retired) at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Since 1985 he has studied scientific-technical problems of disarmament. An experimental focus is automatic sensor systems for co-operative verification of disarmament and peace agreements and for IAEA safeguards for an underground final repository. The second focus is assessment of new military technologies and preventive arms control, including verification. Studies have dealt with “non-lethal” weapons, civilian and military technologies in aviation, military uses of microsystems technology and of nanotechnology, confidence and security building measures for cyber forces, armed uncrewed vehicles and autonomous weapon systems. He co-founded and chairs the German Research Association for Science, Disarmament and International Security (FONAS) and has authored book chapters on the relationship of natural science, armament and disarmament. He teaches a lecture "Physics and Technology of the Verification of Arms-Limitation Agreements".