Inside the Messy Ethics of Making War with Machines

August 18, 2023

(MIT Technology Review) – To pull the trigger—or, as the case may be, not to pull it. To hit the button, or to hold off. Legally—and ethically—the role of the soldier’s decision in matters of life and death is preeminent and indispensable. Fundamentally, it is these decisions that define the human act of war.

It should be of little surprise, then, that states and civil society have taken up the question of intelligent autonomous weapons—weapons that can select and fire upon targets without any human input—as a matter of serious concern. In May, after close to a decade of discussions, parties to the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons agreed, among other recommendations, that militaries using them probably need to “limit the duration, geographical scope, and scale of the operation” to comply with the laws of war. (Read More)