Topic: Autonomous Weapon Systems
Country: Cuba
Delegate Name: Benjamin Hedge
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Cuba position papers GLIMUN 2015 committees
Autonomous weapon systems are computer controlled weapons that act with little to no human supervision.This means that the choice of whether or not to take a human life is put in the hands of computers that don’t have the fundamental capability to make ethical decisions. The lack of human monitoring and the need to increase our understanding of if Artificial intelligence has the capability to make reliable and ethical decisions makes the need to more clearly define and discuss the Nature of autonomous weapon systems ever more apparent.
The responsibility of what is caused by the autonomous weapon system must be given to the nation that commissioned the autonomous weapon system, similar to any other maned operation that takes place. If an airspace is entered by an unmanned aircraft it should have the same legal repercussions as a manned aircraft.
The use of Autonomous weapon systems is premature at this time. The necessity to more clearly define if an Artificial intelligence can make true ethical decisions is something the international community must do. It is ethically wrong to allow the use of these weapons to continue if we have not gotten a better idea of how the Autonomous weapon systems will develop in the future. So we say that for the foreseeable future we are in favor of halting the use of all Autonomous weapons do to the general need to gain an understanding of how we can expect this technology to be implemented in the future and the morally ambiguous nature of giving the choice to take a human life to an artificial intelligence.
