The Concept of “The Human” in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons

The idea that using “killer robots” in armed conflict is unacceptable because they are not human is at the heart of nearly every critique of autonomous weapons. Some of those critiques are deontological, such as the claim that the decision to use lethal force requires a combatant to suffer psychologically and risk sacrifice, which is impossible for machines. Other critiques are consequentialist, such as the claim that autonomous weapons will never be able to comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) because machines lack human understanding and the ability to feel compassion.

This article challenges anthropocentric critiques of AWS. Such critiques, whether deontological or consequentialist, are uniformly based on a very specific concept of “the human” who goes to war: namely, someone who perceives the world accurately, understands rationally, is impervious to negative emotions, and reliably translates thought into action. That idealized individual, however, does not exist; decades of psychological research make clear that cognitive and social biases, negative emotions, and physiological limitations profoundly distort human decision-making—particularly when humans find themselves in dangerous and uncertain situations like combat. Given those flaws, and in light of rapid improvement in sensor and AI technology, it is only a matter of time until autonomous weapons are able to comply with IHL better than human soldiers ever have or ever will.