DIAS Event: Human-Machine Interaction and the Exercise of Human Agency in the Military Domain by Ingvild Bode

Militaries increasingly utilise AI technologies (AIT) for decision support and combat operations. These developments point in the direction of a potential comprehensive integration of AIT into military decision-making processes. This makes it likely for such processes to be characterised by many situations of human-machine interaction, often described by militaries as human-machine teaming. Practices of human-machine interaction have the potential to profoundly alter the quality of human agency, understood as the ability to make choices and act, in warfare. Specifically, these practices shape forms of distributed agency in between humans and AIT. Current (Western) military thinking underestimates the comprehensive significance of human-AIT interaction patterns – and how these shape human decision-making spaces and the exercise of human agency.

Such thinking takes human personnel and AIT as distinct, fundamentally complementary entities. In other words, human-AIT teaming allows militaries to benefit from the ‘best of both worlds’. But making decisions with AIT shapes and affects human decision-making spaces in both intentional and non-intentional ways. It follows that instances of human-AIT interaction can be associated with advantageous but also adverse consequences for the exercise of human agency. Distributed agency therefore needs to be recognised as raising foundational operational, ethical-normative, and legal challenges.

About Ingvild Bode
Ingvild Bode is Professor of International Politics at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). She is also Director of the Center for War Studies at SDU. Ingvild is the Principal Investigator of two large externally funded research projects: the AutoNorms project (funded by the European Research Council) investigating how practices related to autonomous weapon systems change international norms, and the HuMach project (funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark) that examines how interacting with AI technologies changes the exercise of human agency in warfare. Ingvild is an expert member of the Global Commission on Responsible AI in the Military Domain (GC REAIM). Previously, Ingvild served as Chair of the IEEE Research Group on Issues of AI and Autonomy for Defense Systems. Ingvild’s research focuses on processes of normative and policy change, especially with regard to the use of force and AI governance. Her work has been published with the European Journal of International Relations, Ethics and Information Technology, Review of International Studies, Global Studies Quarterly, and other journals. Ingvild’s most recent book entitled Autonomous Weapons and International Norms (co-authored with Hendrik Huelss) was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2022. 

Venue
The DIAS Auditorium, SDU Campus Odense

This event is open for all. No registration needed.