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  1.  49
    Accepting Moral Responsibility for the Actions of Autonomous Weapons Systems—a Moral Gambit.Mariarosaria Taddeo & Alexander Blanchard - 2022 - Philosophy and Technology 35 (3):1-24.
    In this article, we focus on the attribution of moral responsibility for the actions of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). To do so, we suggest that the responsibility gap can be closed if human agents can take meaningful moral responsibility for the actions of AWS. This is a moral responsibility attributed to individuals in a justified and fair way and which is accepted by individuals as an assessment of their own moral character. We argue that, given the unpredictability of AWS, meaningful (...)
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  2.  47
    A Comparative Analysis of the Definitions of Autonomous Weapons Systems.Mariarosaria Taddeo & Alexander Blanchard - 2022 - Science and Engineering Ethics 28 (5):1-22.
    In this report we focus on the definition of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). We provide a comparative analysis of existing official definitions of AWS as provided by States and international organisations, like ICRC and NATO. The analysis highlights that the definitions draw focus on different aspects of AWS and hence lead to different approaches to address the ethical and legal problems of these weapons systems. This approach is detrimental both in terms of fostering an understanding of AWS and in facilitating (...)
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  3.  50
    Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence in National Defence.Mariarosaria Taddeo, David McNeish, Alexander Blanchard & Elizabeth Edgar - 2021 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):1707-1729.
    Defence agencies across the globe identify artificial intelligence as a key technology to maintain an edge over adversaries. As a result, efforts to develop or acquire AI capabilities for defence are growing on a global scale. Unfortunately, they remain unmatched by efforts to define ethical frameworks to guide the use of AI in the defence domain. This article provides one such framework. It identifies five principles—justified and overridable uses, just and transparent systems and processes, human moral responsibility, meaningful human control (...)
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  4.  30
    Ethical governance of artificial intelligence for defence: normative tradeoffs for principle to practice guidance.Alexander Blanchard, Christopher Thomas & Mariarosaria Taddeo - forthcoming - AI and Society:1-14.
    The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the defence domain raises challenges for the ethical governance of these systems. A recent shift from the what to the how of AI ethics sees a nascent body of literature published by defence organisations focussed on guidance to implement AI ethics principles. These efforts have neglected a crucial intermediate step between principles and guidance concerning the elicitation of ethical requirements for specifying the guidance. In this article, we outline the key normative (...)
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  5.  70
    From AI Ethics Principles to Practices: A Teleological Methodology to Apply AI Ethics Principles in The Defence Domain.Christopher Thomas, Alexander Blanchard & Mariarosaria Taddeo - 2024 - Philosophy and Technology 37 (1):1-21.
    This article provides a methodology for the interpretation of AI ethics principles to specify ethical criteria for the development and deployment of AI systems in high-risk domains. The methodology consists of a three-step process deployed by an independent, multi-stakeholder ethics board to: (1) identify the appropriate level of abstraction for modelling the AI lifecycle; (2) interpret prescribed principles to extract specific requirements to be met at each step of the AI lifecycle; and (3) define the criteria to inform purpose- and (...)
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  6.  38
    Autonomous weapon systems and jus ad bellum.Alexander Blanchard & Mariarosaria Taddeo - forthcoming - AI and Society:1-7.
    In this article, we focus on the scholarly and policy debate on autonomous weapon systems and particularly on the objections to the use of these weapons which rest on jus ad bellum principles of proportionality and last resort. Both objections rest on the idea that AWS may increase the incidence of war by reducing the costs for going to war or by providing a propagandistic value. We argue that whilst these objections offer pressing concerns in their own right, they suffer (...)
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  7. A Risk-Based Regulatory Approach to Autonomous Weapon Systems.Alexander Blanchard, Claudio Novelli, Luciano Floridi & Mariarosaria Taddeo - manuscript
    International regulation of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) is increasingly conceived as an exercise in risk management. This requires a shared approach for assessing the risks of AWS. This paper presents a structured approach to risk assessment and regulation for AWS, adapting a qualitative framework inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It examines the interactions among key risk factors—determinants, drivers, and types—to evaluate the risk magnitude of AWS and establish risk tolerance thresholds through a risk matrix informed by (...)
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  8.  21
    (1 other version)Jus in bello Necessity, The Requirement of Minimal Force, and Autonomous Weapons Systems.Alexander Blanchard & Mariarosaria Taddeo - 2022 - Journal of Military Ethics 21 (3):286-303.
    In this article we focus on the jus in bello principle of necessity for guiding the use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). We begin our analysis with an account of the principle of necessity as entailing the requirement of minimal force found in Just War Theory, before highlighting the absence of this principle in existing work on AWS. Overlooking this principle means discounting the obligations that combatants have towards one another in times of war. We argue that the requirement of (...)
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  9.  21
    Autonomous Force Beyond Armed Conflict.Alexander Blanchard - 2023 - Minds and Machines 33 (1):251-260.
    Proposals by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) to use bomb disposal robots for deadly force against humans have met with widespread condemnation. Media coverage of the furore has tended, incorrectly, to conflate these robots with autonomous weapon systems (AWS), the AI-based weapons used in armed conflict. These two types of systems should be treated as distinct since they have different sets of social, ethical, and legal implications. However, the conflation does raise a pressing question: what _if_ the SFPD had (...)
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