Search: battlefield robots
14 Jan Boundaries of the Battlefield Symposium Insight
[Peter Margulies is a Professor of Law at the Roger Williams University School of Law focusing on the balance of liberty, equality and security in counter-terrorism, and author of Law’s Detour: Justice Displaced in the Bush Administration (NYU Press 2010).] The days of Donald Rumsfeld chiding “Old Europe” are gone, but targeted killing has renewed debate on counter-terrorism strategies between the US and Europe. Boundaries of the Battlefield, a symposium sponsored last week by The Hague’s Asser Institute and coordinated by Asser researcher and Opinio Juris contributor Jessica Dorsey, offered...06 Sep Targeted Killing Away from the Battlefield: A Response to Ken
...goes where they go. “Battlefield” and “theatre of conflict” are not legal terms in the treaty law of war, not as limitations on the armed conflict itself. The law of war accepts as a practical reality that the armed conflict is where hostilities happen to take place, which means, of course, that the armed conflict is a reflection of hostilities and hostilities can be undertaken as a matter of jus in bello where the participants are. The reason for this traditional rule is obvious — if the armed conflict is...29 Jul Military Commissions Moving Ahead
...was available (in cases of martial law, occupation, or in the midst of battlefield exigency). Seven years and thousands of miles removed from any actual battlefield exigency, there can be no argument that the military commissions at Guantanamo are serving any of these purposes. To the extent they may be justified in this context at all, it is as the only forum in which it is possible to charge violations of the law of war – either because there is no relevant charging offense under federal criminal law, or because...17 Mar Revised Version of My Killer Robots Article
...above, pointed out an unresolved tension in the earlier version. On the one hand, I argue that although most consequentialist critiques accept that the key issue with autonomous weapons is whether they can comply with IHL as well as human soldiers, those critiques focus almost exclusively on the limits of AWS technology, ignoring the far more serious limits on the ability of humans to make rational decisions. On the other hand, I argue that many deontological critiques of autonomous weapons are misguided because they assume that killer robots “decide” in...
02 Apr Symposium on Military AI and the Law of Armed Conflict: Responsible Deployments of Militarised AI – The Power of Information to Prevent Unintended Engagements
...In discharging this obligation, the attacking party seeks to construct a picture of the battlefield and gathers information relevant to determinations of status (civilian/military). Compliance with positive obligations will ideally supply the party to conflict with a pool of information on the performance of a particular AWS, its potential risks, the modalities of its interaction with human operators, the battlefield environment and the identity, behaviour or characteristics of persons and objects of interest. Based on this information, the party will either be able to lawfully engage a target or be...02 Aug Search and Rescue and the Spread of UAVs
...them. The same technology, cost, safety, efficiency, and so on, drivers that push for fire surveillance in the Sierra Nevada will be exactly the same ones that drive the military to use the technology. One can call it an arms race, I suppose, but only if one imagines that it is all about military use, otherwise it is a misleading way of thinking about the technology. A better way to think about this is to go back to what make robots robots. In general, there are three conceptual pieces: A...07 Oct Prematurely Jumping From the Global Financial Crisis to the End of the World as We Know It
Charles Gittings "But is it not far too early for sweeping geopolitical and historical interpretations?" A good question. I wish your attitude towards torture and the use of robots for the purpose of indiscriminate murder was equally sober. And as usual, I can't help wondering why it's not. Emerson Yeah, tell us the truth about murder robots! Stunted minds want to know! karlito And don't forget the mind control rays too, Charlie! XD-235 "Murder robots?" I deplore this robophobic sentiment. Charles Gittings Well gee Emerson, you can read a bit...13 May International Law and Literature: Peter Watts’ “Malak”
Following on Ken’s most recent post on autonomous battlefield robots, I came across the short story Malak by Peter Watts (you can read it here). What jumped out at me was a short story that beginning with epigrams such as these: “An ethically-infallible machine ought not to be the goal. Our goal should be to design a machine that performs better than humans do on the battlefield, particularly with respect to reducing unlawful behavior of war crimes.” –Lin et al, 2008: Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design “[Collateral] damage...