Chapter

Autonomous weapons and reactive attitudes

Jens David Ohlin

Lethal autonomous weapons : re-examining the law and ethics of robotic warfare

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021

p. 189-201

English

The discourse surrounding Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) should encourage deeper consideration of how perceptions and reactive attitudes toward AWS could evolve in such a way to no longer reflect their deterministic nature. Human beings, whether enemy combatants or civilians, may respond to AWS not as sophisticated but ultimately deterministic actors, but rather as free agents and thus targets for feelings of gratitude or resentment. The link between behavior interpretation, perceived agency, and emotional attitudes has important implications for the deployment of AWS. This chapter concludes by noting that some resentment to the lethal use of force is inevitable among civilians and combatants and argues that the deployment of an AWS is an unreliable tool for reducing this response.

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• Lethal autonomous weapons : re-examining the law and ethics of robotic warfare / edited by Jai Galliott, Duncan MacIntosh & Jens David Ohlin