Designing for Meaningful Human Control in Military Human-Machine Teams

Abstract: We propose methods for analysis, design, and evaluation of Meaningful Human Control (MHC) for defense technologies from the perspective of military human-machine teaming (HMT). Our approach is based on three principles. Firstly, MHC should be regarded as a core objective that guides all phases of analysis, design and evaluation. Secondly, MHC affects all parts of the socio-technical system, including humans, machines, AI, interactions, and context. Lastly, MHC should be viewed as a property that spans longer periods of time, encompassing both prior and realtime control by multiple actors. To describe macrolevel design options for achieving MHC, we propose various Team Design Patterns. Furthermore, we present a case study, where we applied some of these methods to envision HMT, involving robots and soldiers in a search and rescue task in a military context.