Is a ban on autonomous offensive weaponry beyond meaningful human control going to work?
This depends, on how one defines “work.” Will this stop every country, every organization looking for control, from developing,
or attempting to develop these technologies? Likely not. However, an agreement by major world powers, such as those countries in the UN,
could help to suppress this type of technology and prevent their well funded research institutions from developing it further.
The argument is similar to that of nuclear warfare technology: is mutually assured destruction enough to prevent angry, powerful
governments from destroying each other? So far, the answer has been yes. However, autonomous offensive weaponry can be much
more subtle than nuclear warfare, and detecting it/preventing its spread would be far more difficult. The only thing that a ban would
accomplish is preventing those in organized IPS research and development from publically developing such technologies.
Another point to consider is those organization/groups of people which are not recognized nor do they submit to the global authorities
such as the United Nations. For instance, with the proper resources terrorist organizations could easily create and execute the use of
autonomous weaponry. Clearly, a “ban” would not apply to such a group. How would other countries respond to ISIL’s use, for instance,
of autonomous weapons against them? Would they continue to follow global laws and not use such weapons in return? We would argue that
they would indeed proceed to use the same weapons in defense. From this point, there would likely be a cascading effect ending only
with every country possessing and freely utilizing autonomous weapons.
In conclusion, this ban would only work for organized groups that can honestly, mutually agree on terms and conditions, which may not
be enough to prevent its use in “dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing,
etc” as described in the Musk/Hawking Open Letter On Autonomous Weapons. So, it probably wouldn’t. Nevertheless, there could be some good that might
arise from banning autonomous offensive weapons such as hindering mass production and public use of autonomous offensive weapons.