Lethal autonomous weapons systems: Adapting to the future of unmanned warfare and unaccountable robots

Abstract

In response to a push from civil society to confront the legal and ethical dimensions of lethal robotics, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons convened a four-day Meeting of Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) in 2014, which was followed by five-day meetings in 2015 and 2016. This was the first occasion diplomats had openly discussed or even considered the prospect of lethal autonomy. Many issues remain unresolved. In response, this article seeks to address the question, how do lawmakers and policymakers in the United States envisage responding to the advent of LAWS? As a new addition to literature on lethal autonomy, the article considers whether a robot with either strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Artificial Consciousness (AC) could obtain moral agency and stand trial in the U.S. military justice system. The necessary reforms within the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) are ultimately deemed too difficult to achieve, meaning that LAWS will not obtain personhood unless robots are conferred moral agency first under civilian criminal law. The status of Military Working Dogs (MWDs), which are alive and conscious, is then utilized as a case study to illustrate how unattainably high the bar for moral agency is for animals and robots alike, suggesting that the training and development of what we call the 'Machine's Human Operator/Overseer (MHO)' -humans who will either share in the responsibility or be held solely accountable for the actions of LAWS during human-machine teaming missions-could utilize lessons gained from MWD handlers in previous conflicts