The Disruptive Effects of Autonomy: Ethics, Trust, and Organizational Decision-making (MINERVA)
Abstract
Rapid advances in autonomous systems raise fascinating behavioral questions. In particular, for theDepartment of Defense, understanding how factors like trust, risk, and organizational incentives could sape the development, use, and effectiveness of autonomous systems will be critical. In order to answer hese questions, experts will need to move beyond the purely technical factors and models of ffectiveness traditionally used in military analysis and utilize a broader range of behavioral science tools nd organizational theory.This project seeks to understand the human, organizational, and political factors that will affect the illingness of individuals and bureaucracies to adopt autonomous systems, and the potentialconsequences of these attitudes. How do knowledge and familiarity, as well as the consequences for job rospects, influence attitudes towards autonomous systems? What characteristics will guide when U.S. ilitary personnel and decision-makers trust autonomous systems, and what are the implications of any rust gap relative to other types of systems? How would different types of autonomous systems affect the illingness of the U.S. public and decision-makers to support the use of force? Finally, how will the useof autonomous systems influence crisis bargaining and coercion, particularly in flashpoints such as the south China Sea? To answer these questions, this project will bring together theories on adoption capacity and military technologies (Horowitz 2010), theories on the societal effects of emerging technologies (Juma 2016), and theories on what drives public attitudes concerning emerging technologies Schneider and Macdonald 2016, Horowitz et al. 2017), to build a broader understanding of the disruptive behavioral effects of autonomy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 30, 2018
- Source ID
- FA95501810194
Entities
People
- Michael Horowitz
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of Pennsylvania