The Rise of Autonomous Weapons and the Global Regulatory Debate (2000s-2010s)

The Rise of Autonomous Weapons and the Global Regulatory Debate (2000s-2010s)

Since the 2000s, military technology has developed rapidly, and night-vision goggles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and GPS, previously reserved for the military, have become widespread in civilian life. As the U.S. began to normalize targeted attacks by drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was concern that "weapons that make killing decisions without human judgment" were becoming a reality. This is the problem of so-called "autonomous lethal weapon systems (LAWS).

There were two factors at play at the time. First, warfare was becoming "non-contact. In post-Cold War conflicts, remotely operated and autonomous weapons were actively introduced to minimize soldier casualties, and technology began to play a leading role on the battlefield. Second, advances in AI and sensor technology have made it technologically feasible to leave target identification and attack decisions to machines.

In response to this trend, the United Nations, human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission on Robotic Weapons Control strongly warned that killing decisions should not be left to machines. Robots" was formed in 2013, and the global regulatory movement began in earnest. At the center of the debate was the question of who would be responsible for "ethics and responsibility.

At the time, the technology had not yet reached the point of full autonomy, but many experts saw it as "just a matter of time" in light of the advances in drone precision and image recognition technology. In particular, major powers such as the U.S., China, and Russia were advancing autonomous weapons research in the context of military competition, and there was widespread concern in the international community that regulation would take a back seat.

Thus, the "rise of autonomous weapons" was a theme that symbolized the historical situation from the 2000s to the 2010s, when the militarization and civilianization of technology were progressing simultaneously, and posed the fundamental question of how far human decision-making should be left to machines.