By José María Lasalle
Lethal Autonomous weapons have changed war and will continue to do so. They are characterized by automating the dehumanization that accompanies the exposure to death that defines war with efficient logic. A phenomenon related to the intense digitalization that humanity is experiencing. The protagonist that makes its existence possible is called artificial intelligence. It is exclusively responsible for the autonomy that makes this type of weapon possible. An artificial intelligence applied in multiple ways in technological devices that, according to the Red Cross and the United Nations, are defined as autonomous lethal weapons.
It is important to emphasize this because without artificial intelligence there would be no autonomy in the handling of these weapons. A disturbing causal relationship that makes it possible to confuse civilian and military uses because they feed off each other. So much so that it should lead us to raise an ethical debate on the need to delimit a priori how far innovation can go if it does not take place within a limiting context of the uses of technology, which should be thought in terms of purpose and not risk. Let us not forget that the massive training of artificial intelligence develops algorithmic knowledge that is easily transferable. Hence, what is obtained under civilian use can migrate to that of military use and vice versa without too many issues.
There is a singularly evil phenomenon in the purpose that leads to the existence of lethal weapons, which is none other than to free human beings from tasks and supervision in which their intervention reduces the destructive effect that they seek to guarantee. What is sought is to increase the efficiency of the capacity to harm and destroy. Not by increasing the destructive power used, which is secondary, but by minimizing the risk of error linked to the development of the violent action for which it serves. Something that is achieved by the intermediation of an algorithmic knowledge that applies artificial intelligence in the lethal weapon that uses it.
This circumstance, so present in these weapons, takes us beyond ethics to enter the field of morality and the human capacity to want to enhance evil for evil’s sake. Hence, this type of weapon releases a component of cruelty that favors the intensification of the inhumanity that is always present in a war. Among other things, because it scales the decision-making automatism that justifies the violent action that results from its use. A maximization of violent efficiency that stems from neutralizing the moral issues associated with the fact that human beings can refuse to continue fighting, hesitate to do so, or err in the use of the weapons available to them in a warlike conflict.
Because of these types of weapons, war is changing in quality and numbers. It is becoming something more terrible than it ever was because they paradoxically reduce human participation in the decision-making that accompanies their use. An effect intended to increase the vulnerability of those who are its victims in equal measure. In this way, the result leads to maximizing destructive efficiency without moral costs for the combatant, or the society that sustains the belligerence of a rearguard that guarantees the continuity of a conflict against another country with its support. A way of killing, let’s put it this way, that makes war invisible in its most harmful effects and, incidentally, lowers the level of repulsion and moral fatigue that weakens the military commitment of the combatants or public opinion itself over time. Above all, when the horrors of war become more transparent as it drags on. A fact that is not minor because, thanks to history, we know this to be one of the reasons that have helped in bringing an early end to war the most. To put faces and eyes to the victims and executioners provokes, in the long run, a moral weariness that subverts the human condition and deters from continuing to kill those in front of you.
Unfortunately, we are seeing the effects of lethal weapons in the countries that use them on a massive scale. The case of Israel is paradigmatic, but it is not an isolated case, since the use of these weapons is becoming commonplace in all the conflicts that tear peace on the planet apart. However, the case of Gaza is the cruelest because they are being used indiscriminately in the enclave. Recently they were also used during the escalation of conflict in Iran. In this sense, the war in Ukraine has turned the country into an experimental laboratory for new prototypes by both combatants.
The possibility of curbing the growth of these weapons is pending the development of a convention limiting their use, in accordance with the provisions of international humanitarian law of war, by the international community. A regulatory framework that was introduced after the brutal experience of the conflicts brought about by the industrial revolution which culminated in World Wars I and II.
No one is unaware that the chances of such an initiative prospering are slim, due to the proliferation of armed conflicts we are currently experiencing, in which the victorious outcome for one side over the other is related to the use of these weapons. Among other things, because they break the balance of deterrence on which conventional warfare was based, to facilitate another type of warfare that is more automated and dependent on the technological level of the combatants. Hence, a fundamental part of the drive for autonomous lethal weapons is directly related to progress in the cognitive capabilities of artificial intelligence. A priority for the United States and China in their struggle for hegemony in this field. So, it will be difficult for us to see the international community succeeding in convincing both superpowers of the need to put limits on such inhuman competition.