Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
Public debate is heating up over the future development of autonomous weapon systems. Some concerned critics portray that future, often invoking science-fiction imagery, as a plain choice between a world in which those systems are banned outright and a world of legal void and ethical collapse on the battlefield. Yet an outright ban on autonomous weapon systems, even if it could be made effective, trades whatever risks autonomous weapon systems might pose in war for the real, if less visible, risk of failing to develop forms of automation that might make the use of force more precise and less harmful for civilians caught near it. Grounded in a more realistic assessment of technology – acknowledging what is known and what is yet unknown – as well as the interests of the many international and domestic actors involved, this paper outlines a practical alternative: the gradual evolution of codes of conduct based on traditional legal and ethical principles governing weapons and warfare.
Disciplines
International Humanitarian Law | Law | Military, War, and Peace | Science and Technology Law
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Kenneth Anderson & Matthew C. Waxman,
Law and Ethics for Autonomous Weapon Systems: Why a Ban Won't Work and How the Laws of War Can,
Stanford University, The Hoover Institution Jean Perkins Task Force on National Security & Law Essay Series
(2013).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1803
Included in
International Humanitarian Law Commons, Military, War, and Peace Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons
Comments
This essay revises and significantly extends an earlier, short Policy Review article by Anderson & Waxman from 2012, "Law and Ethics for Robot Soldiers."