Regulating Autonomous Weapon Systems: Challenges and Future Prospects

The introduction of Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) has been described as a third revolution in warfare following the development of gunpowder and nuclear weapons. Technological advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Facial Recognition Technology, Drones and Big Data have spurred the development of AWS that can operate without meaningful human control. Given the legal, operational and ethical challenges posed by AWS, many states have called for an international treaty to regulate and prohibit these systems. This research paper seeks to understand the ongoing debate at multilateral forums on how to regulate and limit the use of these weapon systems, specifically in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE). At the global level, there is an extensive debate on how to define concepts such as meaningful human control and autonomy in the context of governing and regulating an autonomous weapon system. The paper examines these definitional issues and locates how global powers have positioned themselves within the existing debate. The CCW has made limited progress towards agreeing on legally binding regulations and there continues to be a lack of consensus among the State Parties on the way forward. Given the current deadlock, the paper also makes recommendations on how future progress on regulating AWS can be made in the relevant forums.