Oorlog, AI en de voorzorgplicht om nevenschade te vermijden

The recent war in Gaza shows once again that conducting military operations in densely populated areas is, to say the least, problematic both from a legal and a moral perspective. International Humanitarian Law and the Just War Theory do not entirely prohibit military actions that will knowingly provoke unintended harm to noncombatants. For this type of actions to be permissible two conditions must be satisfied. First, the military advantage should outweigh the harm done to the civilian population. Second, all feasible precautions must be taken to minimize the risk of collateral harm. This article primarily addresses the second condition. In the first part, the focus will be on what IHL has to say about the duty to take precautionary measures. Given the fact that IHL is not very precise in stipulating what ‘feasible’ precautions are, we will turn in the second part to the military ethics literature for more guidance. In the last part of the article, we want to ascertain to what extent the introduction of AI-enabled decision support systems can be considered a relevant ethical factor in the debate on the scope of precautionary measures.