Lethal Autonomous Weapons: Designing War Machines with Values

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) have becomes the subject of continuous debate both at national and international levels. Arguments have been proposed both for the development and use of LAWs as well as their prohibition from combat landscapes. Regardless, the development of LAWs continues in numerous nation-states. This paper builds upon previous philosophical arguments for the development and use of LAWs and proposes a design framework that can be used to ethically direct their development. The conclusion is that the philosophical arguments that underpin the adoption of LAWs rather than not, although prima facie insufficient, can be actualized through the proposed Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. Hence, what is proposed is a principled design approach that can be used to embed stakeholder values into a design, encourage stakeholder cooperation and coordination and as a result promote social acceptance of LAWs as a preferable future fact of war

An Intervening Ethical Governor for a Robot Mediator in Patient-Caregiver Relationships

© Springer International Publishing AG 2015DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46667-5_6Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience challenges when interacting with caregivers due to their declining control over their musculature. To remedy those challenges, a robot mediator can be used to assist in the relationship between PD patients and their caregivers. In this context, a variety of ethical issues can arise. To overcome one issue in particular, providing therapeutic robots with a robot architecture that can ensure patients’ and caregivers’ dignity is of potential value. In this paper, we describe an intervening ethical governor for a robot that enables it to ethically intervene, both to maintain effective patient–caregiver relationships and prevent the loss of dignity

An Evaluation Schema for the Ethical Use of Autonomous Robotic Systems in Security Applications

We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems

Liable, but Not in Control? Ensuring Meaningful Human Agency in Automated Decision-Making Systems

Automated decision making is becoming the norm across large parts of society, which raises interesting liability challenges when human control over technical systems becomes increasingly limited. This article defines "quasi-automation" as inclusion of humans as a basic rubber-stamping mechanism in an otherwise completely automated decision-making system. Three cases of quasi- automation are examined, where human agency in decision making is currently debatable: self- driving cars, border searches based on passenger name records, and content moderation on social media. While there are specific regulatory mechanisms for purely automated decision making, these regulatory mechanisms do not apply if human beings are (rubber-stamping) automated decisions. More broadly, most regulatory mechanisms follow a pattern of binary liability in attempting to regulate human or machine agency, rather than looking to regulate both. This results in regulatory gray areas where the regulatory mechanisms do not apply, harming human rights by preventing meaningful liability for socio-technical decision making. The article concludes by proposing criteria to ensure meaningful agency when humans are included in automated decision-making systems, and relates this to the ongoing debate on enabling human rights in Internet infrastructure

Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems: lifesaving/lethal scenarios for naval operations

Prepared for: Raytheon Missiles & Defense under NCRADA-NPS-19-0227This research in Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems applies precepts of Network Optional Warfare (NOW) to develop a three-step Mission Execution Ontology (MEO) methodology for validating, simulating, and implementing mission orders for unmanned systems. First, mission orders are represented in ontologies that are understandable by humans and readable by machines. Next, the MEO is validated and tested for logical coherence using Semantic Web standards. The validated MEO is refined for implementation in simulation and visualization. This process is iterated until the MEO is ready for implementation. This methodology is applied to four Naval scenarios in order of increasing challenges that the operational environment and the adversary impose on the Human-Machine Team. The extent of challenge to Ethical Control in the scenarios is used to refine the MEO for the unmanned system. The research also considers Data-Centric Security and blockchain distributed ledger as enabling technologies for Ethical Control. Data-Centric Security is a combination of structured messaging, efficient compression, digital signature, and document encryption, in correct order, for round-trip messaging. Blockchain distributed ledger has potential to further add integrity measures for aggregated message sets, confirming receipt/response/sequencing without undetected message loss. When implemented, these technologies together form the end-to-end data security that ensures mutual trust and command authority in real-world operational environments—despite the potential presence of interfering network conditions, intermittent gaps, or potential opponent intercept. A coherent Ethical Control approach to command and control of unmanned systems is thus feasible. Therefore, this research concludes that maintaining human control of unmanned systems at long ranges of time-duration and distance, in denied, degraded, and deceptive environments, is possible through well-defined mission orders and data security technologies. Finally, as the human role remains essential in Ethical Control of unmanned systems, this research recommends the development of an unmanned system qualification process for Naval operations, as well as additional research prioritized based on urgency and impact.Raytheon Missiles & DefenseRaytheon Missiles & Defense (RMD).Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited