Dan Saxon - Fighting Machines: Autonomous Weapons and Human Dignity

Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Bert B. Lockwood, Series Editor
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Autonomous Weapons and Human Dignity

Dan Saxon

Copyright 2022 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Saxon, Dan, author.

Title: Fighting machines : autonomous weapons and human dignity / Dan Saxon.

Description: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2022] | Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021015345 | ISBN 978-0-8122-5355-9 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Autonomous weapons systemsMoral and ethical aspects. | Autonomous weapons systems (International law) | Respect for persons. | Dignity. | International lawMoral and ethical aspects.

Classification: LCC KZ5645.5.A98 S29 2022 | DDC 341.6/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015345

For Bruce

God himself gave a mind to the human soul. Has not human ingenuity discovered and exploited all our numerous and important techniques ? And is it not this mental, this rational drive, even when it seeks satisfaction in things superfluous, nay more, in things dangerous and suicidal, a witness to the excellence of its natural endowment ? What marvellous, stupendous results has human industry achieved ! Against even human beings all the many kinds of poison, weapons, engines of war!

Saint Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans

This book addresses the relationship between lethal autonomous weapon systems, human dignity, and international law. Its central thesis is that the delegation of human responsibility for moral judgments to lethal autonomous weapon systems erodes human dignity and, consequently, international law.

Weapon systems are as old as warfare.

Like a mounted warrior from premedieval times, a modern foot soldier is also a weapon system.

Historically, battle for the common soldier and the system that he represented was often a series of myopic, small-scale scenarios that were fought by their own rules.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, that truism already had begun to change. The development of the machine gun put into the hands of one man the fire-power formerly wielded by forty. in the system.

Today, in the twenty-first century, this trend continues and at a faster pace. The U.S. Department of Defense treats the virtual and anonymous environment of cyberspace as a new domain of warfare, subject to offensive and defensive military operations.

For the purposes of this book, an autonomous weapon system is a weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.

With respect to new weapon technologies, one commentator observed that we are at a point in history where we can see into the future of armed conflict and discern some obvious points where future technologies and developments are going to stress the current law of armed conflict.

The obligation to protect human dignity is the starting point for the interpretation and application of international law. But it is also true that international law, to preserve its capacity to adjust rights and responsibilities between states, and between states and individuals, must ensure the preeminence of the principle of human dignity.

Thus, the foundational notion of human dignity in international law provides a broader theoretical framework for this book. The following chapters explore whether humans legally may delegate to autonomous weapons their responsibilities for judgments that require assessments of competing legal and moral values, most importantly decisions to take human life. To be clear, I do not refer to a literal delegation of legal or moral responsibility to machines, because machines cannot possess responsibility. Rather this book addresses the transfer of human powers for the decisions to take human life to the artificial intelligence that controls LAWS.

As the swiftness of LAWS increases, however, the opportunities for human involvement and intervention in such decisions inevitably will decrease. Thus, the speed of LAWS and not their autonomy per se presents an additional challenge for the protection of human dignity, and the duties imposed by international law. Therefore, to preserve the principle of human dignity and ultimately international law, the book recommends that the design of LAWS ensure teamwork and interdependence between humans and the computer software that directs these weapon systems.

All law, both international and domestic, is based on the allocation of responsibility. Therefore, as part of a review of the challenges for the application of treaty and customary law to these new weapons, this book examines whether humans should retain their duty to think and reason about complex value-based decisions. I conclude that humans should maintain responsibility for decisions that require moral judgments, for example, decisions that define what our values are, decisions that compel us to weigh competing and contradictory values, and decisions that likely will remain on our conscience and within our consciousness: in other words, decisions that test and build our humanity.

The decision to take a human life, or to spare it, is the supreme expression of morality and humanity. This decision, this use of judgment, requires the assessment and balancing of profoundand very differentmoral values. Professional soldiers and officers train for years to develop sufficient knowledge and judgment to make decisions implicating the loss of human life. The ability and responsibility to make these judgments constitute an essential part of soldiers and officers identity, that is, their humanity. Replacing the human bearers of responsibility for such decisions with artificial intelligence removes the moral agency and autonomy that lie at the core of the personalities of these men and women. That stripping of responsibility, therefore, damages human dignity.

Today, much of the debate about LAWS focuses on the question whether it is lawful (and moral) to develop and deploy autonomous weapon systems that will exercise lethal force without human involvement or oversight.

In response to Human Rights Watch and the IHRC, Michael Schmitt and Jeffrey Thurnher argue that a ban of LAWS is unsupportable as a matter of law, policy and operational good sense.