The rise in AI technology brings about a host of moral questions. Recently, on The Drew Mariani Show, moral theologian Dr. Charles Camosy, Ph.D., joined Drew to discuss the use of autonomous weapons in warfare.

What are Autonomous Weapons? 

Autonomous weapons, according to The Harvard Kennedy Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, “are a nascent class of military systems that, once activated, can independently conduct military missions without human intervention.” Right now, the use of autonomous weapons in combat is not yet widespread. However, some excerpts have suggested the U.S. might could deter Chinese action in Taiwan by embracing these types of weapons.

Moral Considerations

Despite the newness of the technology, Catholic leaders have already begun sounding the alarm bells. These weapons, Camosy told Drew, reduce human beings to a data set, undermining the dignity of the human person – even an enemy combatant.

In May, the Most Reverend James Conley, bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska wrote that autonomous weapons “could not be used justly, even in a just war.” The use of weapons require human agency and a conscience, and an algorithm cannot make “judgements of proportionality and discrimination,” Conley wrote.

Camosy told Drew that proponents of these weapon systems often make consequentialist arguments. “China’s just going to do this. Russia’s just going to do this. Iran is just going to do this,” Camosy said. Why should America be at a disadvantage?

In a recent opinion column in The Washington Post, Katherine Boyle, a Catholic defense and aerospace investor, made a version of that argument. “If the U.S. falls behind in this race, what could it mean for tomorrow’s battlefield, she wrote.” In her argument, deterrence has a better record than disarmament.

That line of reasoning, though it may produce military parity with our enemies, nonetheless, fails to account for the necessity of human action in weapons. “At a certain point, we have to say a human being must be responsible for taking [control of] a situation in which somebody is going to live or die,” Camosy said.

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