UK sets out its position on autonomous weapons

The UK’s Ministry of Defence released its Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy on 15th June, 2022. The release of the Defence AI strategy was accompanied by a policy paper featuring an annex which sets out the UK’s position on lethal autonomous weapons systems, and in which the UK says that it opposes ‘the creation and use of systems that would operate without meaningful and context-appropriate human involvement throughout their lifecycle.’ The UK Stop Killer Robots campaign has released a statement on the UK’s position, which can be read here, noting that while the position is a significant development, it provides no indication of how “context appropriate human involvement” is to be assessed or understood. The AutoNorms project has also published an article on the MoD’s strategy and policy statement.