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War Roboethics

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Roboethics

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering ((ISCA,volume 79))

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Abstract

Military robots are receiving increasing use in modern conflicts of arms, and naturally give rise to severe war robot ethical questions concerning the firing decision, discrimination, responsibility, and proportionality. This chapter starts with background material on the war concept and the ethical issues/laws of war. Then, it discusses the ethics of autonomous or semiautonomous robots in war, and presents the principal arguments against autonomous war robots (inability to program war laws, human out of the firing loop, lower barriers to war), also including some positive arguments about war robots.

In war, truth is the first casualty.

Aeschylus

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

Ernest Heningway

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Most countries accept nowadays the position that international peace and security require the United Nations Security Council approval prior to an armed response to aggression, unless there is an imminent threat.

  2. 2.

    The use of nuclear weapons is not prohibited by the war laws, but is a “taboo” and never used after World War II.

  3. 3.

    It is noted that the two other categories on the amount of human involvement in selecting targets and firing are: human-on-the loop (robots can select targets and fire under the oversight of a human who can override the robot’s actions) and human-out-of-the loop (robots that are capable of selecting targets and firing without any human input or interaction).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Spyros G. Tzafestas

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  1. Spyros G. Tzafestas
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Correspondence to Spyros G. Tzafestas .

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Tzafestas, S.G. (2016). War Roboethics. In: Roboethics. Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, vol 79. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21714-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21714-7_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21713-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21714-7

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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