ABSTRACT
The emergence of increasingly autonomous weapon systems and other military applications of artificial intelligence presents a challenge for those asked to consider the future of warfare. On the one hand, the deployment of genuinely task-autonomous military platforms certainly can disrupt and shift the current paradigm of war, removing soldiers from harm’s way but potentially breaking international law or placing civilians at additional risk. On the other hand, however, as with other aspects of technoscience, decision-makers must remain grounded in technical reality rather than succumbing to hype. This chapter aims to present a technically grounded and balanced exploration of how the future of warfare is likely to be affected by the use of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS). To do so, it first presents an evaluation of technical progress of major states towards reliable and deployable LAWS. This is followed by an overview of progress towards operational concepts for the use of such systems. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the likely impacts of such systems on the future of geopolitical competition and conflict, as well as proposing a normative framework for reducing the risks of unintentional escalation between users of LAWS in the future.
