Democracy and Regulating Autonomous Weapons: Biting the Bullet while Missing the Point?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12203 |
| Author | John Williams |
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
Democracy and Regulating Autonomous
Weapons: Biting the Bullet while Missing
the Point?
John Williams
Durham University
Abstract
Public policy debate around regulating emerging autonomous weapons systems is vital, but in danger of neglecting
crucial challenges. Current analysis focuses around efforts to define autonomy and to incorporate ‘autonomous’sys-
tems within established regulatory systems, particularly international law and arms control treaties and conventions.
This emphasises two key decision moments as the focus of regulation: the initiation of hostilities and target engage-
ment, reflecting the just war tradition that provides the intellectual backdrop for much of this debate. This article sug-
gests this underestimates the significance of the potential consequences of such weapons systems, arguing that this
consensus disguises the extent to which autonomy can only be meaningfully engaged within the specific context of
the circumstances when such systems may be deployed, and that the speed of decision-making by such systems will
outstrip regulatory endeavours focused on the two decision moments. This paper thus argues that only wide-ranging
debate, especially within democracies leading the development of such systems, about the relationship of autonomous
systems to the nature and purpose of military violence and underpinning democratic values and principles, can ade-
quately address the challenge presented by the emergence of contextually autonomous weapons.
Policy Implications
•Policy makers must respond to the NGO-led challenge in these areas, accepting and pursuing calls for compliance
with the highest existing legal standards in development and deployment. That also requires developing workable
definitions of ‘automaticity’and ‘autonomy’that retain sufficient flexibility to permit appropriate technological inno-
vations enabling safer, more discriminate and more proportionate weapons systems.
•Arms control, for example via the United Nations Conventional Weapons Convention (UNCWC), is a further valuable
course to pursue. Overcoming its limitations –encompassing nonstate actors and developing effective and timely
verification mechanisms in particular –is a key challenge.
•Political leadership is necessary to ensure sustained and serious debate over if and how technologies of automation
and autonomy contribute to the protection and promotion of core democratic values, for example: human rights,
dignity and equality; accountability; shared identity; popular sovereignty; national self-determination; and citizen
participation.
•The development of deep-rooted professional standards and values among the diverse communities involved with
emergent autonomous weapons, rooted in democratic values, is as important a regulatory practice as formal legal
standards.
Weapons systems capable of a growing range of func-
tions independent of human control create significant
debate, especially within democratic societies. Current UK
and US policy, two democracies leading development of
such technology, precludes deploying systems without
human involvement in, or monitoring of, command and
control decisions, especially around target engagement
(HRW, 2012, pp. 7–8). However, public policy debate
about regulating ‘autonomous’weapons is significant
(e.g. ICRAC, 2009, 2014; HRW, 2012). Some fear present
assurances about continued human oversight will be
incrementally eroded to the point where oversight is,
effectively, impossible or meaningless (e.g. Heyns, 2013,
p. 6; HRW, 2012, p. 20). Whether other governments
interested in acquiring such systems will exercise the
same rigorous control as the US and UK is also troubling.
Addressing the challenges of Lethal Autonomous Weap-
ons Systems (LAWS) is a bullet that must be bitten.
Development of increasingly advanced weaponry, up to
and including artificially intelligent systems could alter
Global Policy (2015) 6:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12203 ©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 3 . September 2015 179
Research Article
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