AI Constitution
1

Candidate Thesis

Autonomous Warfare

Sign in to propose an editHistory

No AI system should conduct military operations without direct human supervision.

Summary

The case for including this

Mandating human supervision of military operations keeps a person in the loop for life-and-death decisions, preserving moral and legal accountability where the stakes are highest. It guards against fully autonomous weapons that could escalate conflicts at machine speed beyond human control or comprehension. This reflects a widely shared instinct that the decision to take human life must remain a human one.

The case for changing or excluding this

Including this trades defensive necessity and speed against human moral control: a strict human-in-the-loop rule could ban defensive systems—missile interception, drone-swarm defense, cyber response—where machine reaction times are the only viable defense and a human in the loop means losing. The terms 'military operations' and 'direct human supervision' are also imprecise, the clause may be naive about adversaries who will not comply, and it overlaps with the law-of-war provision. It needs to define the level of human control required and distinguish offensive lethal autonomy from time-critical defensive use.

Discussion

Sign in to join the discussion.

Related resources