Conference: Military AI and the Resort to Force

 

This one-day conference will bring together legal academics, ethicists, members of the military, IR scholars and the wider public to discuss the potential impact of autonomous weapons and AI-based decision support systems on the interstate use of force. Significant international attention has been given to the challenges and opportunities of AI in the context of the jus in bello, the rules governing the conduct of hostilities during armed conflict. Far less attention has been paid to the potential impact of these same technologies on the decision to resort to force. This conference will thus fill an important gap in debates over the importance of AI to warfare.

The conference will open with a keynote address by Lt. Gen. John (Jack) Shanahan, a retired United States Air Force lieutenant general who last served as the first Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The keynote will then be followed by three 90-minute panels. The  first panel will debate a common criticism of autonomous weapons: namely, that their (controversial) potential to lower combat risks for the user and minimise the unnecessary death and suffering of civilians on both sides of a conflict will lower the acceptable thresholds for violence on the international stage. The second panel will explore how, for ill and for good, the use of AI technologies might affect first-use incentives and state decision-making in the context of nuclear crisis. The third and final panel will explore whether and/or to what extent AI-based technologies, primarily decision support systems, can help commanders assess the necessity and proportionality of force, the two basic requirements of self-defence, when a state is the victim of an armed attack.

Information:

  • Date: Thursday 27 February 9:00-17:00 (followed by a reception)
  • Venue: 35.01.06 at CSS, entrance from Gammeltoftsgade 15, 1353 København K

Register for the conference here no later than February 25.

Programme

9:00-9:30      Registration

9:30-10:30   Keynote Speech, Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan

10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:15 Panel 1: AI and the Threshold for Violence

  • Jessica Dorsey (Utrecht)
  • Alexander Blanchard (SIPRI)
  • Francis Grimal (Buckingham)
  • Discussant: Kevin Jon Heller (Copenhagen)

12:15-13:15 Lunch

13:15-14:45 Panel 2: Military AI and Nuclear Deterrence 

  • Kenneth Payne (Kings College London)
  • Erik Lin-Greenberg (MIT)
  • Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores)
  • Discussant: Neil Renic (Copenhagen)

14:45-15:00 Coffee Break

15:00-16:30 Panel 3: Command-Level Human-Machine Teaming

  • Brianna Rosen (Oxford)
  • Ingvild Bode (Southern Denmark)
  • Elke Schwarz (Kings College London)
  • Discussant: Lena Trabucco (Edinburgh)

16:30-17:00 Closing Keynote (TBD)

17:00-17:45 Reception

There will be a light breakfast and lunch provided for all registered attendees.