The Legality and Accountability of Autonomous Weapon Systems
A Humanitarian Law Perspective

A comprehensive definition of autonomous weapons systems and their operation and what happens when they cause violations of international law.

Afonso Seixas-Nunes (Author)

9781316514832, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 May 2022

304 pages
23.6 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.557 kg

By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the legality of the use of autonomous weapons systems under international law. It examines different arguments presented by States, roboticists and scholars to demonstrate the challenges such systems will create for the laws of war. This study examines how technology of warfare seeks to increase the dissociation of risk and communication between weapons and their human operators. Furthermore, it explains how algorithms might give rise to 'errors' on the battlefield that cannot be directly attributed to human operators. Against this backdrop, Dr Seixas-Nunes examines three distinct legal frameworks: the distinction between the legality of weapons and the laws of targeting; different mechanisms of individual accountability and the importance of recovering the category of 'dolus eventualis' for programmers and technicians and, finally, State responsibility for violations of the laws of war caused by weapons' software errors.

Table of abbreviations
1. Introducing autonomous systems of war: The challenges of artificial intelligence
2. AWS: The current state of the AWS debate and of state policy
3. Autonomous weapons systems and 'Autonomy': Weapons or Killer Robots?
4. AWS and the IHL requirements
5. Accountability and liability for the deployment of autonomous weapon systems
Final conclusion.

Subject Areas: IT & Communications law [LNQ], International humanitarian law [LBBS], Armed conflict [JPWS]