Get it on Google Play

The Ethics of Autonomous Weapons Systems

The Ethics of Autonomous Weapons Systems

Author: Software Engineering Daily April 30, 2026 Duration: 1:06:40
Software Engineering Daily
NewsTechnology

Artificial intelligence is transforming warfare faster than the legal and ethical frameworks designed to govern it. Militaries around the world are deploying AI-powered decision support systems to identify targets, assess proportionality, and direct weapons. The gap between what is technically possible and what international law can effectively regulate is widening by the day.

Yuval Shany is a law professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a research fellow at the Oxford Ethics in AI Institute. He also served on the UN Human Rights Committee, where he first encountered the legal and ethical challenges posed by autonomous weapons systems. His research focuses on the intersection of international humanitarian law, human rights, and emerging military technologies.

In this episode, Yuval joins Matt Merrill for a wide-ranging conversation. They cover topics including how close we are to fully autonomous lethal weapons, the accountability gap that AI-mediated warfare creates, and what lessons software engineers can draw from these challenges when building consequential AI systems of any kind.

Matt Merrill is a software engineering leader with over 20 years of experience building and scaling software teams across enterprise and product-focused organizations. His background is in backend development, cloud architecture, and distributed systems design. He currently architects and delivers software products and leads a team of engineers at DEPT® Agency. You can learn more about his work at code.theothermattm.com.

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com

The post The Ethics of Autonomous Weapons Systems appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.


Dive into a curated collection from the vast library of Software Engineering Daily with Greatest Hits Archives-Software Engineering Daily. This podcast isn't about new trends or breaking news; instead, it serves as a thoughtfully assembled replay of the most impactful and enduring conversations from the show's history. Each episode selected for this archive represents a foundational discussion, a pivotal interview, or a deep exploration that has resonated deeply with the technology community over the years. You'll hear veteran engineers, pioneering founders, and insightful researchers break down complex topics-from distributed systems and database architecture to the human elements of building effective teams and sustainable engineering cultures. The archive format allows listeners to experience the essential building blocks of modern software thought leadership, all in one dedicated feed. Whether you're discovering these classic conversations for the first time or revisiting them with fresh perspective, this podcast provides a timeless resource. It cuts through the noise of the daily tech cycle to deliver substantive content that remains relevant long after its original release, offering a masterclass in the principles and practices that define our industry.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

Official website RSS
youtubelinkedinspotifyapple_music
Software Engineering Daily
Podcast Episodes
Hype and Reality of the AI Coding Shift [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:05
AI coding tools have gone from novelty to core infrastructure in under three years. Today, many devs use AI daily, a substantial share of new code is AI-generated, and expectations for automation are rapidly increasing.…
Unlocking the Data Layer for Agentic AI with Simba Khadder [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:04
AI agents are increasingly capable of reasoning and performing autonomous work over long periods. However, as agents take on more complex, longer-horizon tasks, keeping them supplied with the right information becomes th…
Agentic Mesh with Eric Broda [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:23
AI agents are evolving from individual productivity tools into distributed systems components inside enterprises. The next frontier is coming into focus, and it involves large-scale ecosystems of collaborating agents emb…
New Relic and Agentic DevOps with Nic Benders [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:18
Observability emerged from the need to understand complex software systems, and involves tracking metrics, logs, and traces so engineers can detect and diagnose problems before they affect users. However, modern applicat…
Mobile App Security with Ryan Lloyd [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:52
Mobile apps have become a primary interface for critical services, including banking, payments, and healthcare. Unlike web applications, much of the logic and intellectual property in a mobile app lives directly on the u…
FastMCP with Adam Azzam and Jeremiah Lowin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:06
The Model Context Protocol, or MCP, gives developers a common way to expose tools, data, and capabilities to large language models, and it has quickly become an important standard in agentic AI. FastMCP is an open source…
SED News: OpenCode, AI Code vs. Shipped Code, and the LiteLLM Breach [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:42
SED News is a monthly podcast from Software Engineering Daily where hosts Gregor Vand and Sean Falconer unpack the biggest stories shaping software engineering, Silicon Valley, and the broader tech industry. In this epis…
FreeBSD with John Baldwin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:31
FreeBSD is one of the longest-running and most influential open-source operating systems in the world. It was born from the Berkeley Software Distribution in the early 1990s, it has powered everything from high-performan…
Cilium, eBPF, and Modern Kubernetes Networking with Bill Mulligan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:30
Modern cloud-native systems are built on highly dynamic, distributed infrastructure where containers spin up and down constantly, services communicate across clusters, and traditional networking assumptions break down. L…

«12345