Valentin Jeutner (Lund University – Faculty of Law; University of Oxford – Faculty of Law) has posted New Weapons and Old Law: Public International Law and the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (in The Cambridge Handbook on Public Law and Artificial Intelligence (Michael Lee Gregory, Rebecca Williams, and John Zerilli, eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The challenge of applying existing law to new weapons is not a new phenomenon. From chemical weapons and submarines to aircraft and nuclear weapons, technological developments have repeatedly raised questions about the capacity of existing international law to regulate novel means of warfare. Today, autonomous weapons raise this question anew. This chapter examines how autonomous weapons interact with the norms governing when states may use force (ius ad bellum) and how force may be used during armed conflict (ius in bello or international humanitarian law). It argues that autonomous weapons are already subject to comprehensive regulation under both bodies of law, notwithstanding occasional doubts about the applicability or adequacy of existing norms. This conclusion does not, however, resolve the broader normative debate. In particular, the ways in which autonomous weapons alter human decision-making raise the question whether more restrictive rules are necessary to address risks that may differ in kind or degree from those associated with conventional weapons. At the same time, focusing on the distinctive challenges posed by autonomous weapons risks obscuring the inherent brutality of warfare itself. Death or injury caused by an autonomous system is not necessarily more undignified than the same harm inflicted by a human-operated weapon. The chapter therefore situates the debate over autonomous weapons within a broader tension between responding to the particular risks created by emerging technologies and confronting the violence that existing international law already permits.
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