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Search: battlefield robots

05 Jan

...already made a new year’s resolution to post more about robots, but promised to cover other areas as well. His first post of the year covered adulteration of extra virgin olive oil, showing that there is no limit to potential international law questions. Kristen Boon also reflected on the role of international law in settling the East China Sea dispute. If you need to catch up with the news of the past fortnight, our weekday news wraps may be helpful. As always, we also provided our weekly events and announcements...
05.01.13 | |

05 Apr

...development and use of AI where its potential benefits can outweigh its risks.  No technology, including weapons and weapons systems, is infallible.  The approach to accountability for unwanted outcomes should be no different than with any other means or method of warfare.             Hyperbolic calls to ban “Killer Robots” specifically, or militarized AI generally, have gained little to no traction among States.  This should come as no surprise given the potential AI offers to exponentially increase the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of operations and reduce the inherent and infamous fog of...
05.04.24 | |

29 Oct

...So, when the behemoth Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) chose to tackle this theme in its blockbuster movie Captain America: Civil War (Civil War) in the form of a treaty, I was intrigued, apprehensive, and cautiously excited. The Movie and the Marvel Cinematic Universe For readers not familiar with the MCU, it is a mammoth media franchise covering a shared fictional universe. Derived from hundreds of Marvel comic books, it centers on a cast of superheroes, gods, sentient artificial intelligence powered robots, powerful fighters, and devoted but talented sidekicks (for the...
29.10.21 | |

02 Oct

...recession had gone worldwide. The full text of the blog post, as it happened, was pretty nearly, ” The recession has gone global.” It linked to a news article of about three paragraphs. This gives me pause. And yet there are plenty of blog posts that I do think citable, including some of my stuff on proportionality and the laws of war, just war theory, theorizing about Michael Walzer’s work, and, of course, robots. Many bloggers, including folks here at OJ, are much more academic in their approach to blogging...
02.10.09 | |

14 May

...framework for counterterrorism – which is to say, a framework of domestic law for things like detention, interrogation, FISA, etc. My paper, which I’ll post up if Brookings will let me once complete, is forward looking with respect to the tactics of counterterrorism, specifically targeted killing, particularly by Predators and advancing robotic technologies. (Yes, dear readers, you knew I would work around to robots eventually.) My fundamental observation to the Obama administration is that, to judge by Campaign Obama and Administration Obama, it embraces targeted killing as a useful method...
14.05.09 | |

01 Jun

...areas not really related to law, but raise topics appropriate to CTLab. You should check out CTLab – it has wonderful academic symposia, an active blog, and many fascinating features that go far outside of the usual international law frame on group violence. Anyway, I am devoted to OJ, and want to be clear that joining up with Volokh is not at all about leaving OJ. Alas, there will be many, many a post devoted to robots and war, and I’ll start talking about microfinance and development finance again. So...
01.06.09 | |

30 May

The Wall Street Journal reporting on un-classifed portions of a report anticipated for release next month. I concentrate on robots, not cyber, so I leave it to others to comment, but I do recall that this report and its conclusions have been discussed a fair amount in academic circles, and as far as I know this will not surprise people following those discussions. (Here’s a good new piece on the topic from Matthew Waxman, in YJIL) Though this is not my speciality, I wanted to flag it for people’s attention....
30.05.11 | |

15 Jan

...Netherlands exported 2.5 million euros worth of military goods -including components of military robots and naval vessels- to Israel between 7 October 2023 and October 2024.  The judge’s conclusions that there is also no legal basis for a full embargo is only reached because the wider context (the illegal occupation) is entirely left out of consideration. Both the Opinion and the Arms Trade Treaty (not mentioned in the ruling, but Article 7 prohibits arms export if there is an overriding risk of facilitating a serious violation of international humanitarian or...
15.01.25 | and |

03 Jan

...informative discussion had run its course, and that the time was right to proceed with a more formal mandate, to “explore and agree on possible recommendations on options related to emerging technologies in the area of LAWS”. Once confirmed, this raised expectations amongst some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that a ban on ‘killer robots’ may follow. However, as other commentators noted at the time, the formal mandate made no reference to negotiating a LAWS treaty, and this was clearly a result of divergent views within the CCW’s membership over how best...
03.01.18 | |

26 Nov

Human Rights Watch has released a new report (co-authored by the Harvard Law School Human Rights Clinic) on autonomous weapons systems that might emerge over the next several decades, titled “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots.” The report calls for a multilateral treaty that would preemptively ban “development, production, and use” of fully autonomous weapons by all states. It would be hard to be more sweeping than the report’s language in calling a comprehensive ban – here is the language from the recommendations, directed to states: Prohibit the development,...
26.11.12 | |

22 Jul

...judges are akin to autonomous robots who mechanistically and abstractly apply inbred, dry legal principles to meticulously pruned fact patterns. To the contrary, good judging is an intensely human and dynamic experience. American Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke of this eloquently last century and Judge Richard Posner has done so in this one. And, on a macro level, good judging requires growth of the entire judicial collective conscience. Being aware of what is going on in the wider world is certainly an integral part of that. And it is, I...
22.07.09 | |

16 Jan

...is the link if you’re interested. Meanwhile, over at Lawfare, Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski, Benjamin Wittes, Matthew Waxman, and I have been debating the recent HRW report calling for a ban on “Killer Robots.” Tom’s latest response – though mostly a serious discussion, well worth reading, though I’m afraid it doesn’t finally manage to persuade me – has a video at the end that I will always, always fondly treasure. It’s great. (It’s in Hindi, and though I didn’t know Tom knew Hindi, I’m going to trust his subtitles.)...
16.01.13 | |