The Ethics and Governance of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems: An International Public Opinion Poll

The Open Roboethics initiative (ORi) conducted an international online survey on the ethics and governance of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), in which the system decides to use lethal force without human intervention, compared with Remotely Operated Weapons Systems (ROWS), in which a remote human operator makes that decision. Released in 14 languages, the survey drew 1,002 respondents from 54 countries, and the results were presented to delegates at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in November 2015. A majority of participants said that all types of LAWS should be internationally banned (67%), that LAWS should not be developed or used (56%), that LAWS should not be used for offensive purposes (85%), and that they would rather their country use ROWS than LAWS when waging war (71%). The sample was self-selected, not representative. The report concludes that more international public engagement is needed to support democratic decisions about the development and use of robotic weapons.