About the event: “Less autonomy, more humanity.” That is the motto of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of 250 human-rights organizations working to negotiate an international treaty that would effectively prohibit states from developing and using autonomous weapons systems. The Campaign’s motto captures the primary legal objection to autonomous weapons: namely, that “killer robots” will never be able to comply with international humanitarian law as well as human soldiers because such compliance requires the kind of judgment, situational awareness, and ability to interpret emotions that only humans possess. This lecture challenges that objection. It begins by showing that those uniquely human traits are far less necessary to IHL compliance than commonly assumed. It then explains why the legal critique of autonomous weapons depends on an idea of “the human” – as fundamentally rational, self-determining, and capable of self-control – that is believed by decades of research into how humans actually make decisions, particularly in dangerous and stressful situations such as combat. And finally, it concludes that the real objection of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is not that autonomous weapons will make worse soldiers than humans – but that they will make better ones.

About the speaker: Kevin Jon Heller is Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies and Distinguished RecurringVisiting Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires. He is an Academic Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London and currently serves as Special Advisor on War Crimes to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where he led the development of the Office's recently issued Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage Through the Rome Statute. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Opinio Juris, the world's oldest blog dedicated to international law.

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