Shereshevsky & Shany: Programmed to Obey: The Limits of Law and the Debate over Meaningful Human Control of Autonomous Weapons

Yahli Shereshevsky (Univ. of Haifa - Law) & Yuval Shany (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem - Law) have posted Programmed to Obey: The Limits of Law and the Debate over Meaningful Human Control of Autonomous Weapons (Columbia Human Rights Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

New military technologies are transforming the contemporary battlefield and raise complex ethical and legal questions previously unaddressed. This essay makes three novel contributions to the significant debate on Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) and military AI in the legal and ethical literature. First, it puts forward a normative argument against AWS—even if they outperform humans in adhering to the rules governing the conduct of hostilities. This argument is grounded in the critical importance of the human capacity to act beyond the strict letter of the law. The essay contends that this capacity is central to the regulation of warfare, which permits, rather than obligates, the use of force against legitimate targets. Second, it offers a doctrinal analysis of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL)—the two principal legal regimes that regulate armed conflicts under international law—providing a fresh perspective on how they intersect in the context of AWS. Finally, the essay explores the extent to which its normative argument is persuasive in the context of military AI beyond AWS, an area that is rapidly evolving and already extensively employed in current conflicts. It examines the similarities and differences between these emerging technologies, and reflects on the implications of those differences for the desirable regulation of both technologies.