Image from IRF

Another interesting interview from Institute for Religion and Peace (Military Diocese of the Republic of Austria) was with Armin Krishnan, a visiting assistant professor for Security Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. His recent book “Killer Robots” (2009) talks about ethics of autonomous weapons, and details of the book can be found here.

For those who would prefer a (somewhat) brief summary of Armin Krishnan’s findings presented in the book “Killer Robots”, below is what I got out it.

And of course, for those who are interested in reading the full article: Click here for the full interview article):

AJung’s Summary:

Q: In your recent book “Killer Robots: The Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons” you explore the ethical and legal challenges of the use of unmanned systems by the military. What would be your main findings?

• Just War Theory is not prepared for autonomous/robotic weapons.
• International law requires that noncombatants are protected and that force is used proportionately and only directed against legitimate targets
• Current autonomous weapons are not capable of generally distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate targets, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be used, or couldn’t improved to the level comparable to humans.
• Lots of civilian casualties have been observed at “recent Western interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq” due to bad human decisions and flawed conventional (but perfectly legal) weapons.
• “I don’t think… there is…  any serious legal barrier for armed forces to introduce robotic weapons, even weapons that are highly automated and capable of making own targeting decisions.”
• “The development and possession of autonomous weapons is clearly not in principle illegal and more than 40 states are developing such weapons”, but legal concerns are not all there is to the problem – what’s more interesting are ethical questions.
• “While the legal debate on military robotics focuses mostly on existing or likely future technological capabilities, the ethical debate should focus on … the question of fairness and ethical appropriateness.”
• ““fairness” is not a requirement of the laws of armed conflict.”
• “Political and military decision-makers … do not want a fair fight” – because they are responsible for protecting the lives of soldiers.
• “soldiers who are tasked with fighting wars and who have to take lives” have a different take on it compared to the political/military decision-makers.
• “Teleoperators of the armed Predator UAVs actually seem to suffer from higher levels of stress than jet pilots who fly combat missions. Remote controlling or rather supervising robotic weapons is not a job well suited for humans or a job soldiers would particularly like to do. So why not just leave tactical targeting decisions to an automated system (provided it is reliable enough) and avoid this psychological problem? This brings the problem of emotional disengagement from what is happening on the battlefield and the problem of moral responsibility…”
  • AJung’s Note: If teleoperators of armed Predator UAVs indeed seem to suffer from higher levels of stress than those who fly combat missions – even though they are generally thought to be in more physical safety than those of who fly missions – then it would be very beneficial to conduct a study on ‘why’ that is, and ‘what’ the cause of their stress it. It would definitely be interesting to find if such stress is related to teleoperator’s moral values or their ethical stance of using such weapons.
• “The soldiers who deploy these weapons are reduced to the role of managers of violence”
• “Even if the devices … only kill combatants and … legitimate targets, we will not feel ethically very comfortable if the result is a one-sided massacre. Any attack by autonomous weapons that results in death could look like a massacre and ethically difficult to justify, even if the target somehow deserved it”
• Do you think that using automated weapon systems under the premise of e.g. John Canning’s concept (targeting the
  weapon systems used and not the soldier using it) or concepts like “mobility kill” or “mission kill“ (where the primary goal is
  to deny the enemy his mission, not to kill him) are ethically practicable ways to reduce the application of lethal force in
  armed conflicts?
• “In an ideal case the weapon would only disarm or temporarily disable human enemies. If we could decide military conflicts in this manner, it would be certainly a great progress in terms of humanizing war.”
• “Pairing nonlethal weapons with robots offers a good comprise… [o]n the other
  hand, it would mean to allow a robot targeting humans in general.”
• “John Canning proposed a “dial-a-autonomy” function that would allow the weapon to call for help from a human operator in case lethal force is needed. This is some sort of compromise for the dilemma of giving the robot lethal weapons and the ability to target humans with nonlethal weapons and of taking advantage of automation without violating international law.”
• ” Using autonomous weapons amongst civilians, even if they control only nonlethal weapons, does not seem right to me.”