Source: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

The UK Ministry of Defence is pursuing an AI targeting system designed to make autonomous operation the norm and human intervention the exception, according to documents obtained through a freedom of information request. A presentation to prospective private-sector partners describes the ministry’s billion-pound Digital Targeting Web project and its ambition to accelerate deployment. The presentation says legal, ethical, security and assurance processes should increase development speed rather than constrain it. An initial version apparently envisages identifying hundreds of military targets each week; the presentation appears to anticipate tracking thousands of moving targets simultaneously by 2030. The reporting describes a departure from the ministry’s earlier emphasis on human control over automated weapons. The ministry did not respond to several requests for comment on the plans.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office stated that the department would comply with international humanitarian law, while leaving the UK’s position on binding autonomous-weapons rules unconfirmed. An unnamed diplomatic official involved in UN discussions questioned how humanitarian law would apply when humans no longer make decisions to kill. The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Seventh Review Conference in Geneva is expected to consider whether negotiations on an instrument governing autonomous weapons should proceed. Richard Lennane of the International Committee of the Red Cross urged states to negotiate a protocol; the reporting says many states favour binding rules, while the United States has proposed a non-binding instrument. The ministry’s AI Ethics Advisory Panel had been inactive for almost a year, and the ministry said its planned replacement, the AI Expert Advisory Group, had not yet convened. RUSI and Article 36 director Richard Moyes criticised the project’s treatment of safeguards, arguing that legal and ethical controls should constrain development where necessary.