IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2016 - 52
Call for International Regulations
of Autonomous Weapons Systems
With the rise of AWS, there has been an increasingly
sophisticated and coordinated response from both
nations and non-governmental organizations calling for
international regulations for these systems. The impetus for an international discussion began in 2010,
when the International Committee for Robot Arms
Control (ICRAC) published the Berlin Statement, which
expressed concern for the loss of human control in the
governance of lethal force and the conduct of war [47].
AWS sit at the intersection of novel
automation capable of making
decisions without humans and
established lethal weapons.
From this statement, in just a few years, two distinct
sides have coalesced: those in favor of banning AWS
(pro-ban) and those in favor of allowing and regulating
AWS (pro-regulation). Pro-ban supporters argue that
AWS without human control will never be capable of
adhering to the laws of armed conflict (e.g. [1], [2], [8]-
[10]). Pro-regulation supporters on the other hand argue
that AWS are already here and are capable, or at least,
can be capable of adhering to the laws of armed conflict - potentially even better than humans (e.g., [6],
[11]-[15]). This debate has escalated rapidly, resulting in
the 121 nation state parties of the United Nations (U.N.)
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)1
hosting three consecutive years of Meetings of Experts
on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems in 2014,
2015, and 2016.
Although no regulations have been agreed upon as
yet, there is a general consensus that international regulation of AWS is needed [16].2 As summarized by Crootof [16], there are many benefits to international
regulation of AWS. These include channeling research
and state practice by limiting and defining what lawful
options are available, improving the likelihood that AWS
1
The U.N. CCW is the international treaty that bans or restricts the use of
land mines, blinding lasers, and other weapons that have the potential to
cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect
civilians indiscriminately. Currently a total of 121 nation states are parties
to the CCW with a further five having signed but not yet ratified [16].
2
There are a few skeptics of the benefits of international regulations who
argue that nations do not need to take any formal action and that the law of
armed conflict will naturally evolve over time to address ambiguities [26].
52
will be used in accordance with international law, and
ensuring different nations' actions are evaluated using
the same standard, amongst many others.
Language Barrier
Despite three consecutive years of meetings, the discussions about AWS at the U.N. have made little or no progress on the four key issues identified at the first meeting
in 2014: 1) how to define autonomy, 2) the amount or
quality of human control necessary for lawful use of
AWS, 3) how to establish an accountability framework
for AWS, and 4) how to review and certify permissible
AWS [17], [18]. Importantly, these four issues encapsulate the breadth of what international regulations would
have to address. So until progress is made on these four
issues, there will be no international regulations,
despite existing consensus in this regard.
The fundamental reason for the stalled discussions
is the lack of a unifying, technical language to describe
and understand the problems posed by autonomous
weapons systems. A unifying, technical language would
address two major communications issues facing the
discussants of AWS: 1) their inability to identify both the
sources of the conflict and solutions that have consensus, and 2) an inability to operationalize the regulations
that are agreed upon.
Identifying Sources of Conflict and Consensus
With so many nation states, non-governmental organizations, and outside experts discussing their opinions and
proposals, it is not a surprise that identifying sources of
conflict and consensus has been a consistent problem
in the discussions of AWS. One particularly difficult discussion has been around the issue of the amount or
quality of human control necessary for lawful use of
AWS. This issue is more commonly known as "meaningful human control" [19]. In previous work [20], we analyzed two proposed definitions of meaningful human
control from two prominent organizations in these discussions: Article 36 [21] and ICRAC [22]. Even though
both organizations are in favor of banning fully-AWS and
mandating meaningful human control for lawful use of
AWS, the prose of the definitions makes it entirely
unclear what types of human control they agree and disagree on. Article 36 required a human operator to have
"adequate contextual information," whereas ICRAC
required "full contextual and situational awareness."
Article 36 required "a positive action by a human operator" to initiate an attack, whereas ICRAC required
"active cognitive participation in the attack."
Ultimately, in order to converge on a single set of regulations, the various proposals from different groups
must be laid out in such a way to be easily compared.
As more people join the conversation, they continue to
IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE
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september 2016
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