ABSTRACT
Demythologizing, deconflicting, and disambiguating various meanings and misunderstandings of the goal of “intelligence” and “autonomy” in machines. Mechanical self-direction and self-management distinguished from intentionality and “higher” forms of human agency. Why machine autonomy, absent consciousness and self-consciousness, does not and cannot in principle equate to freedom of action or independent deliberation and intentional agency in otherwise “intelligent” machines, such that it is formally impossible for there ever in any sense to be an unsupervised “targeting decision” by a machine. Intelligent and autonomous robots instead offer prospects for force multiplication in military settings and are destined to become part of the overall “force mix” deployed rather than replacements for human agents in military operations. Outline of the lines of argument to be explored in subsequent book chapters.
