Autonomous Weapons and Distributed Responsibility
Philosophy and Technology 26 (2):203-219 (2013)
Abstract
The possibility that autonomous weapons will be deployed on the battlefields of the future raises the challenge of determining who can be held responsible for how these weapons act. Robert Sparrow has argued that it would be impossible to attribute responsibility for autonomous robots' actions to their creators, their commanders, or the robots themselves. This essay reaches a much different conclusion. It argues that the problem of determining responsibility for autonomous robots can be solved by addressing it within the context of the military chain of command. The military hierarchy is a system of distributing responsibility between decision makers on different levels and constraining autonomy. If autonomous weapons are employed as agents operating within this system, then responsibility for their actions can be attributed to their creators and their civilian and military superiorsDOI
10.1007/s13347-012-0089-0
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Citations of this work
Mind the gap: responsible robotics and the problem of responsibility.David J. Gunkel - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 22 (4):307-320.
A Normative Approach to Artificial Moral Agency.Dorna Behdadi & Christian Munthe - 2020 - Minds and Machines 30 (2):195-218.
Distributed cognition and distributed morality: Agency, artifacts and systems.Richard Heersmink - 2017 - Science and Engineering Ethics 23 (2):431-448.
Responsibility for Killer Robots.Johannes Himmelreich - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (3):731-747.
Irresponsibilities, inequalities and injustice for autonomous vehicles.Hin-Yan Liu - 2017 - Ethics and Information Technology 19 (3):193-207.
References found in this work
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