April 07, 2016
Autonomous Weapons and Human Control
Nations from around the world met at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss autonomous weapons, potential future weapons that would select and engage targets on their own. Ensuring “meaningful human control” over future weapons has been a topic of much debate, with some human rights activists advocating for a preemptive ban. Increasing autonomy in weapons raises the question of how much human involvement is required in lethal attacks.
In this brief, Scharre and Sayler explain how autonomy is already used in many weapons today and how future fully autonomous weapons would be different. Autonomous weapons would be programmed by humans and launched by a human. Once launched, however, the weapon would have the freedom to select its own targets over a wide area according to preprogramed parameters, raising new legal, ethical, and safety questions.
The report is available online.
Authors
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Paul Scharre
Executive Vice President and Director of Studies
Paul Scharre is the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS. He is the award-winning author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence...
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Kelley Sayler
Former Fellow, Defense Strategies and Assessments Program
Kelley Sayler is a former Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where she worked with the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program and the Future of Warfa...
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