Klaudia Klonowska (T.M.C. Asser Institute) and Taylor Kate Woodcock (T.M.C. Asser Institute) have posted “Rhetoric and Regulation: The (Limits of) Human/AI Comparison in Legal Debates on Military AI” (Forthcoming in Boutin B., Woodcock T. K. & Soltanzadeh S. (eds.), Decision at the Edge: Interdisciplinary Dilemmas in Military Artificial Intelligence, Asser Press (2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous and compelling, yet can it truly deliver ‘better’ speed, accuracy, and decision making in the conduct of war? As AI becomes increasingly embedded in targeting processes, legal and ethical debates often compare who performs better, humans or machines? In this Chapter, we unpack and critique the prevalence of comparisons between humans and AI systems, including in analyses of the fulfilment of legal obligations under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). We challenge this binary framing by highlighting misleading assumptions that neglect how the use of AI results in complex human-machine interactions that transform targeting practices. We unpack what is meant by ‘better performance’, demonstrating how prevailing metrics for speed and accuracy can create misleading expectations around the use of AI given the realities of warfare. We conclude that holistic but granular attention must be paid to the landscape of human-machine interactions to understand how the use of AI impacts compliance with IHL targeting obligations.