A principles-based model of ethical considerations in military decision making

Abstract

When comparing alternative courses of action, modern military decision makers often must consider both the military effectiveness and the ethical consequences of the available alternatives. The basis, design, calibration, and performance of a principles-based computational model of ethical considerations in military decision making are reported in this article. The relative ethical violation (REV) model comparatively evaluates alternative military actions based upon the degree to which they violate contextually relevant ethical principles. It is based on a set of specific ethical principles deemed by philosophers and ethicists to be relevant to military courses of action. A survey of expert and non-expert human decision makers regarding the relative ethical violation of alternative actions for a set of specially designed calibration scenarios was conducted to collect data that was used to calibrate the REV model. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey showed that people, even experts, disagreed greatly amongst themselves regarding the scenarios' ethical considerations. Despite this disagreement, two significant results emerged. First, after calibration the REV model performed very well in terms of replicating the ethical assessments of human experts for the calibration scenarios. The REV model outperformed an earlier model that was based on tangible consequences rather than ethical principles, that earlier model performed comparably to human experts, the experts outperformed human non-experts, and the non-experts outperformed random selection of actions. All of these performance comparisons were measured quantitatively and confirmed with suitable statistical tests. Second, although humans tended to value some principles over others, none of the ethical principles involved-even the principle of not harming civilians-completely overshadowed all of the other principles.

Exploring the Relationship Between Ethics and Trust in Human–Artificial Intelligence Teaming: A Mixed Methods Approach

“…Each participant completed a survey which described eight scenarios. The construction of each scenario was inspired by Reed et al's (2016) use of military ethics scenarios to investigate the relative worth of different moral principles; see Table 1 for all principles used in the current study. Each scenario included (1) the name of the two parties in conflict, (2) the name of an AT, (3) a description of a scenario that may require military action, (4) the AT's recommended action, and (5) the expected consequences of the recommended action.…”

“…The critical aspect of each scenario was the type of ethical principle that was violated by the AT. The AT's recommendation either violated or abided by one of four ethical principles (Reed et al, 2016). Reed and colleagues referenced sources pertaining to general, medical, and military ethics to compile a diverse list of ethical guidelines for review.…”

Implementations in Machine Ethics

“…The following library databases were consulted (with the number of results in parenthesis): Web of Science (18), Scopus (237), ACM Digital Library (16), Wiley Online Library (23), ScienceDirect (48), AAAI Publications (4), Springer Link (247), and IEEE Xplore (113). Of these initial results, 37 items were selected based on the selection criteria listed in Section 3.2.…”

“…There are verbal and non-verbal cues for each action, retrieved through sensors. For the military domain, Reed et al [113] use a model that balances the principles of civilian non-maleficence, military necessity, proportionality, and prospect of success. The resulting principles are ranked in order of importance.…”

The Relationship of Risk to Rules, Values, Virtues, and Moral Complexity: What We can Learn from the Moral Struggles of Military Leaders

“…According to the soldier who mutilated the Taliban insurgents in response to instructions, there was apparently no uncertainty: he followed orders. This incident highlights that in today’s combat environment, military personnel are more likely to be faced with ethical issues because their operations involve counterinsurgency, nation-building, and asymmetric warfare (Reed et al, 2016 ). Therefore, how leaders determine risk and the military effectiveness of an outcome will compound the complexity of the decision-making process and require more situational awareness.…”