Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, and Their Regulation Under International Law

Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, and Their Regulation Under International Law

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An international public debate over the law and ethics of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) has been underway since 2012, with those urging legal regulation of AWS under existing principles and requirements of the international law of armed conflict, on the one side, in argument with opponents who favor, instead, a preemptive international treaty ban on all such weapons, on the other. This Chapter provides an introduction to this international debate, offering the main arguments on each side. These include disputes over defining an AWS, the morality and law of automated targeting and target selection by machine, and the interaction of humans and machines in the context of lethal weapons of war. Although the Chapter concludes that a categorical ban on AWS is unjustified morally and legally — favoring the law of armed conflict’s existing case-by-case legal evaluation — it offers an exposition of arguments on each side of the AWS issue.

ISBN

0199680833

Publication Date

7-1-2017

Book Title

The Oxford Handbook of Law, Regulation, and Technology

First Page

Ch. 45

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Keywords

International Law, Armed Conflict

Disciplines

International Law | Law

Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, and Their Regulation Under International Law

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