Many see the development as worrying, but Helen Frowe, professor and director of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, which researches the ethics of war, does not see any radical shift between an attack with an autonomous drone and other types of weapons.
"I don't think it's worse to be killed by a drone than by a soldier," she says.
The drone that carried out the attack in Zaporizhzhia in early July was equipped with a minicomputer and had no antennas, The New York Times reports. According to analysis, it was likely programmed to fly towards a specific gas station, and then to target a final target of its own choosing. A final decision that was therefore not made by a human.
No control
The real risk with AI is that war could become cheaper and easier, says Helen Frowe, who points out that an algorithm or program cannot make its own decisions.
A drone is not much different from, say, a landmine. Whoever places it has no control over who it kills, it kills whoever steps on it.
The ethical issue is about who kills whom, and why, she believes, not about what weapons are used.
But I think one problem is that it becomes easier for governments to wage war because they don't have to risk the lives of their own citizens to the same extent.
If soldiers don't come home in body bags, a war tends to be less controversial at home, says Frowe.
Precision
Drones can find targets with greater precision than a human pilot, some believe. But skeptics argue that drones that choose their final targets may be more prone to making mistakes or violating the laws of war, such as by failing to distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Both the UN and the Red Cross want countries to adopt bans and restrictions on the use of autonomous weapons systems.
"We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: that machines are targeting humans on their own. Innovation must serve humanity - not endanger it," writes UN Secretary-General António Guterres on X .
Helen Frowe points out that a drone does not panic, and is not stressed or tired.
It doesn't have those kinds of human weaknesses, but the problem, of course, is that in the wrong hands it makes it very easy to kill people.
