The Future of the GGE and Denmark’s Silence in the Debate about Autonomous Weapons Systems
On 17 December 2021, after eight years of (both informal and formal) discussions about the challenges raised by autonomous weapons systems (AWS), states parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) decided on a mandate that dissatisfied many. The Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on LAWS should meet for 10 days in 2022 to […]
The Algorithmic Turn in Security and Warfare
On 6 – 7 January 2022, the AutoNorms project and the Center for War Studies (CWS) held the virtual conference “The Algorithmic Turn in Security and Warfare”. Functional applications of artificial intelligence (AI) based upon machine learning algorithms are in the process of fundamentally reshaping a diverse range of social, business, legal, and political fields. […]
Shortening the Kill Chain with Artificial Intelligence
This post has been guest written by Jennifer Rooke. Jennifer’s author information has been included at the end of this post. In a speech at the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyberspace Conference held on 20 September 2021, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall stated (at 20:50 in the embedded video) […]
A Rare East-West Alignment? Learning about Chinese Positions on Weaponised Artificial Intelligence from the Chinese-language Literature
The development, deployment and use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) is a subject of growing scholarly debate. China is no exception to this trend. To provide a better understanding of Chinese perceptions of weaponised Artificial Intelligence (AI), this article briefly examines relevant Chinese-language sources available from the Knowledge Resource Integrated Database of the China National […]
Drones in Afghanistan: Not a Technological “Silver Bullet”
[A shorter version of this piece was published in the German-language ct Magazin für Computertechnik in September 2021, Ingvild Bode & Tom Watts] The United States and its NATO partners have ignominiously withdrawn from Afghanistan. One of this war’s many legacies will be the use of remotely piloted aircraft – colloquially referred to as drones – to conduct air […]
Can the UN GGE Go Beyond the Eleven Guiding Principles on LAWS?
The first session of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) took place from 3-13 August 2021, in Geneva. After a delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, states parties to the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) could formally continue the discussion […]
“I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots and Your Terminator Tropes”: A Primer on the Terminator Franchise
“Listen, and understand. That Terminator is out there, it can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop…EVER, until you are dead!”, Kyle Reese. References to the Terminator are an ubiquitous feature of debates on Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS). Paul Scharre […]
Reflecting on the Future Norms of Warfare
[The following essay builds on a contribution submitted by Ingvild Bode to the RUSI/HRI project ”The Future Rules of Warfare”. The essay reflects on how current norms of conflict and warfare might be changing.] The legal norms enshrined in the UN Charta, as well as associated legal frameworks such as the Geneva Conventions, the International […]
Russia’s Perspective on Human Control and Autonomous Weapons: Is the Official Discourse Changing?
For many years, Russia’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been developing and testing different weapons, vehicles and systems using Artificial Intelligence (AI). This has been with the goal of modernising the Russian Armed Forces by gradually removing humans from military tasks. The Russian leadership, both political and military, has a visibly strong interest for weapons […]
The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the US Policy on AWS
This short contribution addresses the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) report recently published in the United States (US). This report marks an important step in defining the US’ future AI security policy and can be expected to influence the US position on questions relating to the regulation and prohibition of militarised AI. It […]
