AI can be used by armed forces for many purposes and is regarded as crucial for winning future wars. Particularly problematic, however, would be its use for selection and attack of targets in autonomous weapons systems and for cyberwarfare. Yet already the selection of targets based on automatic evaluations of data can be problematic.

With short contributions and group discussion we want to cover a plethora of topics, including a presentation by PEASEC’s Thea Riebe on human control of lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Other topics include different aspects of the arms race in military applications, reliability issues of target recognition, the acceleration of combat events and related possibilities and problems of human control, commonalities and differences between military and civilian AI applications, the potential of AI for arms control as well as the activities of people working in AI and related effects.

The workshop is part of KI 2019 and is co-organised with the Resarch Association Science, Disarmament and International Security FONAS.

Date, Time and Place

Tuesday, 24 September 2019, 09:00–12:30, Universität Kassel, Arnold-Bode-Straße 2, Raum 0404

Programme (preliminary)

9:00–10:30

  • Jürgen Altmann (TU Dortmund)
    Military AI: Arms Race and Destabilisation Foreseeable
  • Robert Walter (Conscious Coders)
    (Un)reliability of target detection and classification
  • Wolfgang Koch (FKIE/Univ. Bonn)
    Zur militärischen Nutzung der Künstlichen Intelligenz: Ethische, völkerrechtliche und technische Probleme
  • Dimitri Scheftelowitsch (TU Dortmund)
    Specifics of Civil vs. Military AI Applications

11:00–12:30

  • Christian Alwardt (IFSH, Hamburg)
    AI in Decision-Making: Situational Awareness, Early Warning and Command & Control
  • Florian von Keller (Conscious Coders)
    International political development regarding autonomous weapon systems
  • Thea Riebe (TU Darmstadt)
    Meaningful Human Control of LAWS: The CCW-Debate and its Implications for Value-Sensitive Design
  • Lisa Maichle (Universität Augsburg)
    The Discursive Dimension of Military AI Applications
  • Jascha Bareis (Humboldt-Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft)
    Collective swarms competing with singular battle machines: National strategic discourses around military AI
KI’19 Workshop: Critical Examination of Military AI Applications