Human-Machine Interaction: The Distributed Agency of Humans and Machines in Military AI

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into military decision-making
raises foundational challenges to the exercise of human agency in warfare. We
witness a series of complex practices of human-machine interaction. But current
scholarship in International Relations and adjacent social sciences does not yet
capture this distributed agency or its consequences for warfare. To address this,
HuMach offers novel analytical conceptualizations of distributed agency, investigates how human-machine interaction affects the deliberative space that can be exercised by humans in warfare, and identifies associated governance demands. Using practices as a sensitising concept, HuMach examines distributed agency empirically by drawing on the Responsible AI agenda that is gaining ground in some Western states.