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76 mapping the development of autonomy in weapon systems
Normative pressure from within civil society on maintaining meaningful human control
over weapon systems
In addition to the aforementioned legal limitations, there is also a growing normative
opposition within civil society to the development of autonomous weapon systems,
which makes the development and use of such systems potentially politically sensitive
for the military.
The issue of autonomy in weapon systems has attracted growing attention in recent
years from the general public, notably thanks to the significant advocacy work of the
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of 61 international, regional and national
NGOs that calls for a pre-emptive ban on the development, production, use and trade
of ‘killer robots’. 97
The campaign has been successful at creating political momentum on the issue of
autonomy in weapon systems. It can certainly take credit for the fact that there is now
a formal intergovernmental discussion within the CCW framework and that the concept
of meaningful human control has been identified as a possible basis for regulation
or control of autonomy in weapon systems. 98 The campaign has also been successful at
mobilizing an opposition within the expert community, both on the humanities side
(lawyers, ethicists and philosophers) and on the engineering side (AI researchers and
roboticists). In 2015 the Future of Life Institute released an open letter that calls for
a ban on ‘offensive weapons beyond human control’. The letter was signed by 3105 AI
and robotics researchers and other leading figures from academia and the private sector,
such as Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk (Chief Executive Officer
of Tesla), Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Peter Norvig (Research Director at
Google), and another 17 701 individuals (as of February 2017). 99 In 2016 the Institute
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, which is the world’s largest technical professional
organization with over 400 000 members in 160 countries, included in its
very first report of its Global Initiative for Ethical Consideration in Artificial Intelligence
and Autonomous Systems a recommendation to technical organizations to
accept that ‘meaningful human control of weapon systems is beneficial to society’. 100
The extent to which the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots reflects the view of the
general public on the use of autonomous weapon systems remains unclear, as there
have only been a handful of public opinion surveys conducted so far. The survey with
the largest geographic coverage was conducted in 2015 by the Open Robotics Initiative
and involved 1002 participants from 49 countries. It concluded that participants in the
survey were largely opposed to the development and use of LAWS by the military. 101
Another study focused on the US public reached similar conclusions but also
found that public opinion opposing autonomous weapons was highly contextual and
could rise or fall depending on circumstances. It found that the fear of other countries
or non-state actors developing LAWS made the survey participants significantly
more supportive of the USA developing them. Moreover, it appeared that the survey
97 The campaign defines ‘killer robots’ as fully autonomous robots that would be able to select and fire on targets
without human intervention. Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, . For
extensive coverage of the arguments in favour of a ban see Docherty (note 92).
98 United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), The Weaponization of Increasingly Autonomous
Technologies, Considering Ethics and Social Values, UNIDIR Resources no. 3 (UNIDIR: Geneva, 2015).
99 Future of Life Institute, ‘Autonomous weapon systems: an open letter from AI and robotics researchers’, July
2015.
100 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in
Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems, Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Wellbeing
with Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems, Version 1 (IEEE: 2016).
101 A total of 67% considered that all types of LAWS should be banned; 56% considered that LAWS should not be
developed; 85% considered that LAWS should not be used for offensive purposes; 71% considered that the military
should use remotely controlled weapons rather than LAWS. Moon, A. and Nuttall, R., The Ethics and Governance of
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems: An International Public Opinion Poll (Open Robotics Initiative: Vancouver, 2015).