Search: robots
30 May Pentagon Concludes Cyber Attack Can Be Act of War
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....01 Jun Ken also Blogging at Volokh, but not Leaving OJ
...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...14 May Brookings Conference on Legislating Counterterrorism
...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...
29 Nov Do AI Decision Support Systems ‘Support’ Humans in Military Decision-Making on the Use of Force?
...‘killer robots’”. While AI DSS developed around the world are not inherently unlawful, the ways in which they have reportedly been used suggest that humans risk not having the opportunity to exercise the necessary level of agency. For instance, accounts of the IDF using AI DSS in ways that prioritize the quantity of targets or where humans appear to ‘rubber stamp’ targets within seconds suggest that in many contexts of use, human decision-making appears to be not positively ‘supported’ by AI systems. The debate at the UN remains focused on...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...02 Oct Many Generalizations about International Law Professors …
...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...18 May Me, Guest-Blogging
...nature I’m intrigued by the idea that the social world can be modeled by reference to discount rates and net present value and capital budgeting for the private firm. Not entirely convinced, possibly because I am a finance professor, but … intrigued. Autonomous battlefield robots. Or as I like to refer to them, because no editor can resist this … Ethics for Robot Soldiers. This speaks for itself. Just war theory and laws of war. I’m active and interested in matters of just war theory and the ethics of war...02 Jul Is International Criminal Law “Crowding Out” the Rest of Public International Law?
...war anymore? An end-run around the P-5? Neglecting the UN? I want to thank EJIL editor and old friend Joe Weiler for commissioning this essay – and then running it when it turned out to be a somewhat strange piece for EJIL. It draws on my personal experience regarding the early days of the then-proposed ICTY, among other things. Everything from battlefield robots to the P-5 … no lack of topics here in a short space. Although I think it will drive some readers crazy, and for a good reason...21 Feb Another Warbot Metaphor: Nanobot Swarms and Regulatory Challenges
...legislation and interpretation, make them do new tricks. Perhaps this is all that is needed and technology has not left law in the dust. If that is the case, while battlefield robots may present some new risks, do they actually overturn IHL as we know it? (Similarly do some of the other topics mentioned in the links, such as the implications of DNA hacking, raze pre-existing rules?) Are these actually areas where many whole new areas of substantive rules are needed, or are these examples of areas where regulatory enforcement...27 Dec Besides the Year-End Reviews, How About Looking Forward to the Year, or the Century, to Come?
...to society and/or to innovation. (Uh, you know, issues having to do with African cyberpunk, DNA hacking and stuff like that. And don’t even let Ken Anderson (1, 2, 3, etc.) or me (1, 2, etc.) get started on robots…) So I was happy to see that the current issue of Scientific American looks at “The Future of Science: 50, 100, and 150 Years from Now.” Heady stuff. Ubiquitous computing, biotech, colonizing Mars, possibly even my long-awaited flying cars. But reading this with the cool eye of a lawyer (as...