A (Massively) Contextualized Approach

October 3 2024, 18:00

Národní 3, room 108, Prague 1

Free entry.

In October, Nathan Wood, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an External Fellow of both the Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics - Prague and the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, will give a lecture covering key areas of his research on artificial intelligence and autonomous weapon systems in the military domain.

Abstract:

Emerging technologies in the military domain raise a host of moral, legal, societal, and institutional challenges, with objections ranging from critics arguing that AI will create "responsibility gaps" undermining our ability to hold individuals accountable when things go wrong, to broad strategic concerns over the possible negative impact autonomous systems may have on strategic stability and the long-term prospects for peace. However, across numerous debates, autonomous and AI-enabled weapon systems are examined primarily with an eye to the systems themselves, their capabilities, and their limitations. Yet the context of use and the ways these systems will be integrated into existing military structures can be just as, if not more important than the precise technical aspects of such weapons. In this presentation I canvas a number of core ethical and legal principles in war, discussing how emerging technologies impact on our ability to adhere to these principles, and moreover developing a (massively) contextualized approach to ensuring responsible and effective use of autonomous and AI-enabled systems in war. I show that, far from the picture critics attempt to push, these types of weapons are very likely to be deployable in accordance with the ethics and laws of war, but such deployments will demand close attention to the realities of warfare and the realities of a given operational environment.