Jason Matheny

"I think the empirical work that's been done on error rates has been mixed. [Some analyses] found that autonomous weapons were probably having lower miss rates and probably resulting in fewer civilian casualties, in part because [human] combatants sometimes make bad decisions under stress and under the risk of harm. 

"In some cases, there could be fewer civilian deaths as a result of using autonomous weapons.

"But this is an area where it is so hard to know what the future of autonomous weapons is going to look like. Many countries have banned them entirely. Other countries are sort of saying, 'Well, let's wait and see what they look like and what their accuracy and precision are before making decisions.'

"I think that one of the other questions is whether autonomous weapons are more advantageous to countries that have a strong rule of law over those that don't. 

"One reason to be very skeptical of autonomous weapons would be because they're very cheap. If you have very weak human capital, but you have lots of money to burn, and you have a supply chain that you can access, then that characterizes wealthier autocracies more than it does democracies that have a strong investment in human capital. 

"It's possible that autonomous weapons will be advantageous to autocracies more than democracies."