43 2 EXTENSIVE LITERATURE REVIEW She also mentions that the legal principles of proportionality and discrimination are important to consider in the context of weapon design. Proportionality refers to the fact that an attack is only justified when the damage is not considered to be excessive. Discrimination means that a distinction between combatants and non-combatants is possible (Hurka, 2005). Asaro (2012) also refers to the principles of proportionality and discrimination and states that Autonomous Weapon Systems open-up a moral space in which new norms are needed. Although he does not explicitly mention values in his argument, he does refer to the value of human life and the need for humans to be involved in the decision of taking a human life. Other studies primarily describe ethical issues, such as preventing harm, upholding human dignity, security, the value of human life and accountability (Horowitz, 2016; UNDIR, 2015; Walsh & Schulzke, 2015; A. P. Williams, Scharre, & Mayer, 2015). In a previous study we identified the values that people associate with Autonomous Weapon Systems (Verdiesen, 2017; Verdiesen et al., 2019). The overview is derived from both validated value theories as from experts who are involved in the debate on Autonomous Weapon Systems or work in the military domain. After conducting two pilot studies, we selected the values blame, trust, harm, human dignity, confidence, expectations, support, fairness and anxiety to be incorporated in the final questionnaire of the study. The results provide insight in how military personnel and civilians working at the Dutch Ministry of Defense (MOD) perceive these values for both a Human Operated drone, as an example of current technology, as for Autonomous Weapon Systems, as future technology. To our knowledge this study is the first to empirically investigate these values related to Autonomous Weapon Systems and to compare how these values are perceived in current and future weapon systems. Our results show that military personnel and civilians working at the Dutch MOD are more anxious about the deployment Autonomous Weapon Systems than the deployment of Human Operated drones. They also perceive them to have less respect for the dignity of human life than Human Operated drones. Human dignity and anxiety are two values that are mentioned often by the experts in their interviews so it would be essential to address these when debating the ethics of the deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems. Our findings show that the trust, confidence and support for Autonomous Weapon Systems is lower than for Human Operated drones. We would like to note at this point that Autonomous Weapon Systems not only have drawbacks, but also have clear military advantages (Etzioni & Etzioni, 2017) and designing features to increase the trust and confidence of Autonomous Weapon Systems is beneficial from a military point of view.
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