23 1 INTRODUCTION Oversight for Autonomous Weapon Systems might also be applied to other AI fields to ensure accountability of other Autonomous Systems, such as those for Autonomous Vehicles or in the medical domain. The societal contribution of our research is a framework and implementation concept for Human Oversight that would lead to a proper allocation of accountability in the decision-making of the deployment of an Autonomous Weapon System. By identifying the supervisor of these actions, it might be possible to attribute responsibility for the actions taken by the weapon system. This contributes to decreasing the likelihood of unintended consequences in the deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems. Scope Much of the literature in the academic and societal debate on Autonomous Weapon Systems is written and discussed by legal experts and philosophers in the context of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions which are aimed to limit the effects of armed conflicts (ICRC, 2010). As we are no legal experts, this research will stay within the boundaries and rules of the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) as currently defined in the mainstream literature and we will not question these. As with any weapon system, LOAC also applies to Autonomous Weapon Systems. Furthermore, this research will focus on the deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems in the near future, which we define as: within the next 15 years. This entails that we will not study weapons equipped with Artificial General Intelligence or futuristic technology that is not possible to construct yet, but we focus on technology that is currently being developed. In this study, we will take a broad perspective on Autonomous Weapon Systems and will not limit to a specific type of weapon, like autonomous drones, but also consider types such as Autonomous Weapon Systems in the cyber domain and as part of a network of systems. 1.2 SCENARIO In the interest of clarity and consistency, the same scenario will be used in the different phases of this research. This scenario describes a threat to soldiers which could occur during military road clearing operations to find and clear improvised explosive devices. The technology (the facial and image recognition software for people and different preprogrammed options to engage) that is described for the Autonomous Weapon Systems exists separately, but is as far as we know not yet incorporated in a deployed Autonomous Weapon System. However, due to the technological advances we expect that these technological features are possible in the near future which makes this a realistic scenario.
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