Implementing International Responsibility for AI in Military Practice

Descripción del proyecto

Responsabilidad internacional sobre la inteligencia artificial en el ejército

La inteligencia artificial (IA) se utiliza con finalidades de defensa en forma de sistemas de apoyo a las decisiones y algoritmos predictivos para evaluar el riesgo. Sin embargo, la tecnología basada en la IA puede provocar violaciones de los derechos humanos y del Derecho internacional humanitario. Un libro blanco de la Comisión Europea de 2020 sobre la IA excluye explícitamente «el desarrollo y el uso de la IA con finalidades militares». El proyecto I2 RAMP, financiado con fondos europeos, analizará los cambios jurídicos y éticos planteados por la adopción de la IA en el ejército al combinar teoría y práctica. El proyecto aplicará un método interdisciplinario para detectar quién (personas, Estados o ambos) se debe considerar responsable internacionalmente y cómo implementar dicha responsabilidad.

Objetivo

The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in military practice has been famously portrayed as the third revolution in military affairs, after gunpowder and nuclear weapons. While lethal autonomous weapons might be an emerging reality, AI is already present on the battlefields, in the form of, inter alia, decision support systems and risk-assessing predictive algorithms. Just like any other means and methods of warfare, AI-based technology might (and will) lead to human rights and international humanitarian law violations. There is no consensus on the horizon regarding how, to whom and based on what principles international responsibility for such violations could be assigned, let alone implemented. This is particularly conspicuous in the European Union, where the political focus has largely been on the possible applications of AI in business and public services, while the examination of military applications is lagging behind; in fact, the core policy document on the matter, the 2020 European Commission White Paper on AI explicitly excludes “the development and use of AI for military purposes” from its scope.

'Implementing International Responsibility for AI in Military Practice' (I2 RAMP) Action fills this void through bridging theory and practice to comprehensively analyze ethical and legal challenges military AI raises, who (individuals, States or both) can be held internationally responsible and how this responsibility can be implemented with a view to produce both academic and viable operational outputs. This will be achieved by adopting an interdisciplinary approach combining, on the one hand, the Researcher’s academic knowledge of international law and hands-on experience as a military legal adviser, and on the other, the expertise in ethics and computer science of researchers working on the Designing International Law and Ethics into Military AI (DILEMA) Project at the Asser Institute.