Robots and Respect: A Response to Robert Sparrow

Abstract

Robert Sparrow recently argued in this journal that several initially plausible arguments in favor of the deployment of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) in warfare are in fact flawed, and that the deployment of AWS faces a serious moral objection. Sparrow's argument against AWS relies on the claim that they are distinct from accepted weapons of war in that they either fail to transmit an attitude of respect for enemy combatants or, worse, they transmit an attitude of disrespect. In this reply we argue that this distinction between AWS and widely accepted weapons is illusory, and therefore cannot ground a moral difference between AWS and existing methods of waging war. We also suggest that if deploying conventional soldiers in a given situation would be permissible, but we could expect to cause fewer civilian casualties by instead deploying AWS, then it would be consistent with an intuitive understanding of respect to deploy AWS in this situation.