The Disruptive Effects of Autonomy

Rapid advances in autonomous systems raise fascinating behavioral questions. In particular, for the Department of Defense, understanding how factors like trust, risk, and organizational incentives could shape the development, use, and effectiveness of autonomous systems will be critical. 

This project seeks to understand the human, organizational, and political factors that will affect the willingness of individuals and bureaucracies to adopt autonomous systems, and the potential consequences of these attitudes. The project team features a diverse set of scholars with unique prior experience and success conducting research on the behavioral, political, and military aspects of uninhabited and autonomous systems. The project will use an innovative, multi-method approach that includes qualitative research, statistical analysis, and survey experiments of the public, foreign policy and military elites, and the artificial intelligence research community.