Intelligent Agents in Military, Defense and Warfare: Ethical Issues and Concerns

Abstract

Due to tremendous progress in digital electronics now intelligent and autonomous agents are gradually being adopted into the fields and domains of the military, defense and warfare. This paper tries to explore some of the inherent ethical issues, threats and some remedial issues about the impact of such systems on human civilization and existence in general. This paper discusses human ethics in contrast to machine ethics and the problems caused by non-sentient agents. A systematic study is made on paradoxes regarding the long-term advantages of such agents in military combat. This paper proposes an international standard which could be adopted by all nations to bypass the adverse effects and solve ethical issues of such intelligent agents.