On January 6th 2022, IRW’s Prototype Warfare team attended the “The Algorithmic Turn in Security and Warfare” virtual conference organized by the AutoNorms project and the Center for War Studies. Among the speakers was Dr. Elke Schwarz, who delivered an inspiring keynote lecture titled “The Hacker Way: Moral Decision Logics with Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems”. In her address, Dr. Schwarz dove into the ethics of increasing AI integration in military systems. She argued that this development is accompanied by a focus on ‘know-how’ considering the new technologies, at the expense of a proper understanding of the ‘know-what’ regarding their application. Dr. Schwarz explained that this stance is likely to lessen the restraint on harm in future warfare going forward, especially as it justifies normalizing ‘accidents’ as a necessary side-effect.

To learn more about Dr. Schwarz’s perspective, watch her keynote lecture here.