Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy

• Authority: Other multinational
• Jurisdiction: Multinational
• Collections: Multinational;Editors' Picks
• Most recent activity: Enacted
• Most recent activity date: 2023-11-09

Risk subdomain coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the risk subdomain are explicitly described.

• AI system security vulnerabilities
• Cyberattacks, weapon development or use
• Governance failure
• AI pursuing its own goals
• AI possessing dangerous capabilities
• Lack of capability or robustness

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the risk subdomain are described.

• Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
• Unequal performance across groups
• Overreliance and unsafe use
• Loss of human agency and autonomy
• Competitive dynamics
• Lack of transparency or interpretability

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

The document has good coverage of approximately 6-8 subdomains, with strong focus on AI system security (2.2), malicious actors and weapons development (4.2), competitive dynamics (6.4), governance failure (6.5), goal misalignment (7.1), dangerous capabilities (7.2), and lack of robustness (7.3). Coverage is concentrated in security, military misuse prevention, and AI safety domains specific to military applications.

Sector coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the sector are explicitly described.

• National Security

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

This document exclusively governs the National Security sector, specifically addressing military AI capabilities, autonomous weapons systems, and AI use in armed conflict. It does not regulate AI use in any civilian economic sectors.

Legislative Status

Soft Law

Legislative Status Summary

This is a non-binding political declaration with voluntary commitments by endorsing States. The document uses predominantly voluntary language ('should') and relies on state commitment rather than legal enforcement mechanisms.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The document refers to 'endorsing States' collectively without identifying a specific proposing entity or organization that drafted the declaration.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor, AI_Developer, AI_Deployer
• Summary: The declaration explicitly targets States and their military organizations that are developing or using military AI capabilities, including autonomous weapons systems. States act as both governance actors and as developers/deployers of military AI.

Enforcer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The declaration relies on self-enforcement by each endorsing State. There is no external enforcement body specified; rather, States commit to implementing measures within their own military organizations.

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: Monitoring is primarily through self-assessment by States and transparency through public disclosure of commitments. The declaration establishes continued discussions among endorsing States as an informal monitoring mechanism.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Plan and Design
• Collect and Process Data
• Build and Use Model
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy
• Operate and Monitor

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document explicitly covers all stages of the AI lifecycle for military AI capabilities, with particular emphasis on development, deployment, testing/validation, and operational monitoring. It repeatedly references measures 'throughout the life cycle of military AI capabilities' and 'across their entire life-cycles.'

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

• AI Systems
• Predictive AI
• Task-specific AI

Technical Scope Summary

The document explicitly mentions AI capabilities, autonomous functions and systems, and weapon systems incorporating AI. It provides definitions of artificial intelligence and autonomy. It does not specifically mention frontier AI, general purpose AI, foundation models, generative AI, predictive AI, open-weight models, or compute thresholds.