arXiv subjects

Susannah Kate Devitt

Publications and source records attributed to Susannah Kate Devitt.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Meaningful human command: Advance control directives as a method to enable moral and legal responsibility for autonomous weapons systems

21st Century war is increasing in speed, with conventional forces combined with massed use of autonomous systems and human-machine integration. However, a significant challenge is how humans can ensure moral and legal responsibility for systems operating outside of normal temporal parameters. This chapter considers whether humans can stand outside of real time and authorise actions for autonomous systems by the prior establishment of a contract, for actions to occur in a future context particularly in faster than real time or in very slow operations where human consciousness and concentration could not remain well informed. The medical legal precdent found in 'advance care directives' suggests how the time-consuming, deliberative process required for accountability and responsibility of weapons systems may be achievable outside real time captured in an 'advance control driective' (ACD). The chapter proposes 'autonomy command' scaffolded and legitimised through the construction of ACD ahead of the deployment of autonomous systems.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2022

Bad, mad, and cooked: Moral responsibility for civilian harms in human-AI military teams

This chapter explores moral responsibility for civilian harms by human-artificial intelligence (AI) teams. Although militaries may have some bad apples responsible for war crimes and some mad apples unable to be responsible for their actions during a conflict, increasingly militaries may 'cook' their good apples by putting them in untenable decision-making environments through the processes of replacing human decision-making with AI determinations in war making. Responsibility for civilian harm in human-AI military teams may be contested, risking operators becoming detached, being extreme moral witnesses, becoming moral crumple zones or suffering moral injury from being part of larger human-AI systems authorised by the state. Acknowledging military ethics, human factors and AI work to date as well as critical case studies, this chapter offers new mechanisms to map out conditions for moral responsibility in human-AI teams. These include: 1) new decision responsibility prompts for critical decision method in a cognitive task analysis, and 2) applying an AI workplace health and safety framework for identifying cognitive and psychological risks relevant to attributions of moral responsibility in targeting decisions. Mechanisms such as these enable militaries to design human-centred AI systems for responsible deployment.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2022

Australia's Approach to AI Governance in Security and Defence

Australia is a leading AI nation with strong allies and partnerships. Australia has prioritised the development of robotics, AI, and autonomous systems to develop sovereign capability for the military. Australia commits to Article 36 reviews of all new means and methods of warfare to ensure weapons and weapons systems are operated within acceptable systems of control. Additionally, Australia has undergone significant reviews of the risks of AI to human rights and within intelligence organisations and has committed to producing ethics guidelines and frameworks in Security and Defence. Australia is committed to OECD's values-based principles for the responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI as well as adopting a set of National AI ethics principles. While Australia has not adopted an AI governance framework specifically for the Australian Defence Organisation (ADO); Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) has published 'A Method for Ethical AI in Defence' (MEAID) technical report which includes a framework and pragmatic tools for managing ethical and legal risks for military applications of AI. Australia can play a leadership role by integrating legal and ethical considerations into its ADO AI capability acquisition process. This requires a policy framework that defines its legal and ethical requirements, is informed by Defence industry stakeholders, and provides a practical methodology to integrate legal and ethical risk mitigation strategies into the acquisition process.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

Developing a Trusted Human-AI Network for Humanitarian Benefit

Artificial intelligences (AI) will increasingly participate digitally and physically in conflicts, yet there is a lack of trused communications with humans for humanitarian purposes. In this paper we consider the integration of a communications protocol (the 'whiteflag protocol'), distributed ledger 'blockchain' technology, and information fusion with AI, to improve conflict communications called 'protected assurance understanding situation and entitities' PAUSE. Such a trusted human-AI communication network could provide accountable information exchange regarding protected entities, critical infrastructure, humanitiarian signals and status updates for humans and machines in conflicts. We examine several realistic potential case studies for the integration of these technologies into a trusted human-AI network for humanitarian benefit including mapping a conflict zone with civilians and combatants in real time, preparation to avoid incidents and using the network to manage misinformation. We finish with a real-world example of a PAUSE-like network, the Human Security Information System (HSIS), being developed by USAID, that uses blockchain technology to provide a secure means to better understand the civilian environment.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

Normative Epistemology for Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems

The rise of human-information systems, cybernetic systems, and increasingly autonomous systems requires the application of epistemic frameworks to machines and human-machine teams. This chapter discusses higher-order design principles to guide the design, evaluation, deployment, and iteration of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) based on epistemic models. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemic models consider the role of accuracy, likelihoods, beliefs, competencies, capabilities, context, and luck in the justification of actions and the attribution of knowledge. The aim is not to provide ethical justification for or against LAWS, but to illustrate how epistemological frameworks can be used in conjunction with moral apparatus to guide the design and deployment of future systems. The models discussed in this chapter aim to make Article 36 reviews of LAWS systematic, expedient, and evaluable. A Bayesian virtue epistemology is proposed to enable justified actions under uncertainty that meet the requirements of the Laws of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law. Epistemic concepts can provide some of the apparatus to meet explainability and transparency requirements in the development, evaluation, deployment, and review of ethical AI.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

A Bayesian social platform for inclusive and evidence-based decision making

Against the backdrop of a social media reckoning, this paper seeks to demonstrate the potential of social tools to build virtuous behaviours online. We must assume that human behaviour is flawed, the truth can be elusive, and as communities we must commit to mechanisms to encourage virtuous social digital behaviours. Societies that use social platforms should be inclusive, responsive to evidence, limit punitive actions and allow productive discord and respectful disagreement. Social media success, we argue, is in the hypothesis. Documents are valuable to the degree that they are evidence in service of, or to challenge an idea for a purpose. We outline how a Bayesian social platform can facilitate virtuous behaviours to build evidence-based collective rationality. The chapter outlines the epistemic architecture of the platform's algorithms and user interface in conjunction with explicit community management to ensure psychological safety. The BetterBeliefs platform rewards users who demonstrate epistemically virtuous behaviours and exports evidence-based propositions for decision-making. A Bayesian social network can make virtuous ideas powerful.

cs.SI↗