AI, Militarized Automation, and the Collapse of Ethical Distinctions in War

Description

Page: 600-608

Naomi Kilungu (Department of Peace and international relations, Daystar University, Kenya)

The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in military applications has catalyzed the rise of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), inevitably mutating the dynamics of contemporary warfare. These systems, capable of executing lethal activities with minimal or no human intervention, raise ethical, legal, and strategic impasses. This study critically reviews the degrees of autonomy in LAWS, interrogating their inferences for agency, culpability, and the technologization of warfare. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Necropolitics, this study reconnoitres the dissolution of human oversight in combat situations, where decision-making is increasingly subsumed by algorithmic logic. ANT divulges how obligation is subtle across a network of human and non-human actors, with AI, sensors, and algorithms exercising agency in ways that complicate traditional accountability structures. Necropolitics, as theorized by Mbembe (2003) affords a lens for how AI-driven warfare proposes a sovereign technology of death, determining who may live and who must die through impersonal, data-driven processes. Unlike careful warfare, where human combatants make ethical and strategic decisions, LAWS operates within a pre-programmed logic of annihilation, emulating the historical structures of biopolitical control and state-sanctioned violence. By employing qualitative research, the paper scrutinizes international humanitarian law (IHL) and the “responsibility vacuum” incipient from the designation of lethal force to machines. Through an analysis of real-world case studies-including drone warfare, autonomous loitering munitions, and AI-driven targeting systems-this paper divulges the multipart embroglio between military efficiency, ethical concern, and the erosion of human control in conflict. Ultimately, this work accentuates the need for vigorous regulatory mechanisms to oversee the deployment of autonomous weapons and safeguard the primacy of human judgment in warfare.