Engineering, Ethics, and Industry: The Moral Challenges of Lethal Autonomy

Abstract

Abstract The essays in this volume deal primarily with moral, legal, and policy issues arising from the use of remotely-piloted drones (RPVs). This essay, by contrast, raises and discusses questions concerning the additional, distinctive challenges or liabilities to be confronted, primarily in engineering and industry, from what is termed elsewhere in this volume "the relentless drive toward autonomy." This includes principally the demand to exercise "due care" (in analogy with domestic forms of liability law) to ensure that autonomous robotic systems are "safe and reliable," and can be shown to comply as well as humans, or even more effectively, with the applicable international law of armed conflict.