[Workshop] Who are ‘humans’ in military artificial intelligence?

In collaboration with Utrecht University, the Asser Institute is co-organising a workshop to understand and evaluate who are ‘humans’ involved in - or excluded from - the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in the military domain.

Taking place on 13 June 2025, the workshop will bring together experts from various disciplines to examine the roles, responsibilities, and ethical implications of human involvement in military AI. As part of the event, a keynote panel will be held on 12 June, open to students, researchers, practitioners, and the wider public, providing an opportunity for broader engagement with this pressing topic.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming military operations, much like past technological shifts brought by nuclear, aerospace, cyber, and biotechnologies. In recent conflicts, including those in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, AI-driven systems have been deployed on a large scale, particularly in densely populated urban areas. Reports indicate that since October 2023, the Israel Defense Forces have used AI-enabled decision support systems (AI-DSS) to generate targeting data, leading to significant civilian casualties.

Over the past decade, the rise of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) and AI-powered military tools has sparked intense ethical, humanitarian, and legal debates. Since 2014, discussions within the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) have focused on potential regulations for ‘lethal’ AWS, highlighting concerns over accountability and oversight.

‘Meaningful human control’ has been one of the pillars in the decade-long debate on the regulation of AWS. Various terms, such as ‘human agency’, ‘appropriate levels of human judgment’, and ‘direct control and supervision of humans’, have been used to describe this principle. However, ‘meaningful human control’ has been given importance both by the State and non-governmental organisations at the CCW. The concept has also been used in the discussion of broader AI-enabled military systems, beyond AWS. 

This workshop will critically examine the political construction of the concept of ‘humans’ in the development and use of AI-enabled military systems—specifically, who is included and who is excluded from the process. It will explore how the term ‘human’ is shaped by political, ethical, and social factors in the context of military AI.

Additionally, the workshop will delve into the ‘human-machine-human interactions’ that occur in military settings, focusing on those most affected by AI-driven weapon systems, including both military personnel and civilians. Key questions include:

• What assumptions are made about the ‘humans’ involved in the development or deployment of AI-enabled military systems?
• What critiques should we raise about the assumptions embedded in the concept of humans, for instance, from gender, race, and ethnicity standpoints?
• Who is present or absent in groups of individuals that create or interact with military AI - such as military commanders, military legal advisors, executives of defence companies, program developers, engineers, and, ultimately, civilians in hostilities? 

By addressing these questions, the workshop aims to foster a deeper understanding of the social, political, and ethical dimensions of military AI, ensuring that human oversight remains at the heart of its development and use. 

View the provisional programme

About the organisers

This workshop is an interdisciplinary initiative of Utrecht University, co-organised and financed by the focus area Governing the Digital Society and the Institutions for Open Societies' Realities of Algorithmic Warfare project under the platform Contesting Governance, with the Asser Institute’s DILEMA project (Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence) and Utrecht University’s Research Platform on Peace, Security, and Human Rights.