Overview
Paddy Walker’s new book, War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield, discusses the challenges posed by AI and autonomous weapons, attempting to cut through the noise to highlight what decision-makers need to understand about the technical, behavioural and doctrinal questions raised by the development and deployment of these systems. In conversation with Elke Schwarz, they discuss the ethical, policy and operational implications of enhanced human-machine interaction on the battlefield, and the vital importance of human oversight.
Speakers
Commissioned into the Fifth Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, Dr Paddy Walker is now Managing Director of the Leon Group, a fifth-generation family office. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham, an Associate Fellow at RUSI and an Associate at the Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict at the Imperial War Museum. Previously London chair of Human Rights Watch, Paddy is a Board Member of Article 36 and co-authored War’s Changed Landscape with Professor Peter Roberts in 2023. War Without Oversight is published by Howgate Publishing.
Professor Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies (Manchester University Press). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has published extensively in a range of philosophical and security-focused journals.
How to attend
This event is open to RUSI members and will take place at RUSI, 61 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET. If you have any questions regarding this event, please email [email protected].
The discussion will be on the record and the Q&A will be off the record.
