The Warfighter's Tolerance for Autonomy and Its Importance in Strategy and Systems Development
Abstract
The project has systematically explored the attitudes, beliefs, and aptitudes of military personnel in relation to autonomous military technologies, with a specific focus on autonomous weapon systems. In the first place, this investigation intended to delineate areas of risk and ethical uncertainty associated with the prospect of replacing or complementing military human workforces with autonomous military technologies; in the second place, the project also aimed to weigh such risks and uncertainties against the inherent tactical and operational advantages represented by autonomous technologies, identifying viable opportunities and risk mitigation strategies. The core problem investigated by this project is that humans tend to reject autonomous agents when they have either a lack or an excess of trust towards such agents or again when they have a poor familiarity with the relevant systems, due to the inability to establish with them reciprocal coordination and understanding. This problem is perceived as serious especially in the context of hybrid military operations in which human warfighters must entirely rely on the information shared by/with synthetic agents and artificial intelligence. The guiding assumption of our interdisciplinary work in the legal and social sciences is that, while until now the human-machine relationship has been prevalently addressed as a technological challenge, it can in fact only be properly understood in a much broader socio-philosophical context. This context is centrally defined by the notion of tolerance, i.e. the capacity of soldiers to endure and withstand their subjection to technology despite the fact that automation impinges upon their personal autonomy and possibly impacts the soldiers (or his units) psychological wellbeing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 22, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1231009
Entities
People
- Jai Galliott
Organizations
- University of New South Wales