Description
The use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automated systems has already changed the nature of the battlefield. The further diffusion of AI-enabled systems into states’ resort-to-force decision making is unavoidable. While this contribution is currently limited and indirect, trends in other realms suggest that the use of AI-driven systems will increase in this high-stakes area. This panel will analyse AI-enabled systems that could be used either to inform states’ decision making on the resort to force or, in some contexts – such as responding to nuclear threats – to make and directly implement decisions on the resort to force. In the former case, human decision makers draw on algorithmic recommendations and predictions to reach decisions on whether to resort to force; in the latter case, decisions are reached and action taken with or without human oversight. Both raise a host of urgent questions. The five papers that will contribute to this panel will address the ethical, political, and geo-political implications of intelligent machines being brought into the decision to wage war and interrogate how these future-focused, but foreseeable, developments challenge existing rules and norms.
