Legal Review of AWS: Decision support systems and technical feasibility of review- Taylor Woodcock and Klaudia Klonowska

Law and the Future of War

As part of our new, limited series on the Legal Review of AWS, we speak with two researchers from the Asser Institute on what the legal review obligation means for decision support systems, and what technical challenges exist in approaching the review obligation during the design and development phases in the creation of AWS.

Taylor Kate Woodcock is a PhD researcher in public international law at the Asser Institute/University of Amsterdam. Her research, conducted in the context of the DILEMA project on Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence, examines the implications of the development and use of military applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for current international legal frameworks governing armed conflict. In particular, this research project explores the relationship between these legal frameworks and the concept of human agency, with a view to considering whether international law can be accounted for in the design of military AI and the military infrastructures in which these algorithms are embedded.

Klaudia Klonowska is a PhD Candidate in International Law at the Asser Institute and the University of Amsterdam. She studies the interactions of humans and AI-enabled decision-support systems in the military decision-making process and the consequences thereof to the compliance of military practices with international humanitarian and human rights law. She is a member of the research project Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence (DILEMA).

Additional resources:

• Asser's DILEMA project - publications on Article 36 and AWS including how to translate legal obligations to code, philosophy of use of AWS, state responsibility and AWS , criminal responsibility and AWS.
• Klaudia Klonowska, Article 36: Review of AI Decision-Support Systems and Other Emerging Technologies of Warfare, Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (YIHL), Volume 23 (2020), The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press (2021)
• DILEMA Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence in the Military