Ethics of data in war

Legal or lethal? That is the conundrum facing military commanders over the procurement of increasingly sophisticated automated weapons systems: should humans cede to machines the authority to kill? The Mod’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Simon Cholerton, in his first interview, is admirably frank in the Telegraph today, likening such Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (Laws) to chemical and biological weapons. They are unethical, he says. Britain will not develop them. Humans should always have the ultimate say over life and death on the battlefield.

Yet there is no doubt that a 21st-century arms race is under way – one in which data, not bullets and nuclear megatons, are the guarantors of supremacy. Artificial intelligence will allow commanders to process that data with ever greater efficiency. The temptation will surely come, in certain cases, to hand over control altogether. The tactical benefits of doing so will be great. Some nations will surely succumb. It is then that good intentions, like Cholerton’s, will be tested to the limit. In the meantime, it is absolutely essential that Britain continues to invest in the military, and continues to fund advanced technologies like those on display in the exercise currently taking place on Salisbury Plain.

Even so, not even the best-resourced army can fund every potential area of research these days, so numerous are the possibilities, from robotics to nanotech. Nations will partly protect themselves by being global leaders in innovation. As an attractive home to world-leading entrepreneurs, Britain is currently among such nations. It hardly needs saying that this reputation would not survive a Jeremy Corbyn government.