I. Humanitarian arms control

Chapter:

14. Conventional arms control and military confidence building

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2015

Author(s):

Ian Anthony, Mark Bromley, Vincent Boulanin, Lina Grip

Over the past few decades there has been a notable trend towards automation of weapons and the networks in which they are embedded. Until now most or all of this automation continued to include some aspect of human control over the decision-making or action processes. However, developments in technology have provided, or are likely to provide in the near future, options to automate to the extent where autonomous weapons or networks, with no need for a human in the loop, become a realistic possibility. The emergence of weapons without a human involved in the decision-action phase or weapons that are programmed to ‘self-learn’ raises numerous concerns about their potential negative impact on interstate relations and stability, the threshold for the use of force, as well as their compatibility with international human rights law and international humanitarian law.