Abstract
In an influential paper Sparrow argues that it is immoral to deploy autonomous weapon systems (AWS) in combat. The general idea is that nobody can be held responsible for wrongful actions committed by an AWS because nobody can predict or control the AWS. I argue that this view is incorrect. The programmer remains in control when and how an AWS learns from experience. Furthermore, the programmer can predict the non-local behaviour of the AWS. This is sufficient to ensure that the programmer can be held responsible. I present a consequentialist argument arguing in favour of using AWS. That is, when an AWS classifies non-legitimate targets less often as legitimate targets, compared to human soldiers, then it is to be expected that using the AWS saves lives. However, there are also a number of reasons, e.g. risk of hacking, why we should still be cautious about the idea of introducing AWS to modern warfare.
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Notes
- 1.
See (Robillard 2017) for the idea.
- 2.
Note that neither Matthias nor Sparrow are explicit in what they mean with control. However, Matthias refers to Fischer’s and Ravizza’s work. For an alternative notion of control, which is also based on Fischer’s and Ravizza’s work and applied to AWS, see Santoni de Sio and Van den Hoven (2018).
- 3.
The programmer is not limited to such simple variables. It could also be video or audio data for example. If we were to make use only of video data, then the ANN would be an implicit ethical system, as there is no reference to ethical principles.
- 4.
Note, however, that this expectation can be vastly wrong. What the AWS has learned is a simplified model of the real world. Excluding relevant variables, biased or too few samples can lower the accuracy of the model, to name only a couple of issues that the programmer must be aware off.
- 5.
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Swoboda, T. (2018). Autonomous Weapon Systems - An Alleged Responsibility Gap. In: Müller, V. (eds) Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2017. PT-AI 2017. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 44. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96448-5_32
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