Convicting Autonomous Weapons?

Abstract If autonomous weapon systems (AWS) cause harm beyond their legitimate military use, e.g., by killing innocent civilians, the question arises as to who can be held responsible. Due to the great number of persons involved in the construction, programming, training, and deploying of AWS, a ‘responsibility gap’ has been diagnosed. As it is neither theoretically nor practically feasible to impose criminal responsibility on AWS themselves, various doctrines of international criminal law (ICL) have been suggested with a view toward making individual persons responsible for the AWS’s malfunctioning. The mens rea requirements of ICL are, however, likely to severely limit individual criminal responsibility. The author suggests that the emphasis should not be on bending legal doctrine in a futile effort to close the ‘responsibility gap’ but on establishing specific obligations to train, test, and continually observe the operation of AWS in order to avoid malfunctioning.