One of our members, PhD student Rosa Villar, presented her first paper conference, “The Illusion of Legitimacy: AI-Decision Support Systems (AI-DSS) in Targeting and the Unresolved Debate on Meaningful Human Judgment from LAWS", at the Early Career Conference on Emerging Disruptive Technology and Arms Control that took place this November 2025 at the Hague Asser Institute.
Rosa’s paper discussed legal issues raised by the resort to AI-DSS. Those systems are used in the current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. Her paper first explained that human involvement in targeting decisions is required to ensure compliance with the principles of distinction and proportionality under the law of armed conflict. However, as demonstrated by Rosa’s analysis, the resort to AI-DSS prevents meaningful human judgment.
The panelist discussants Henning Lahmann (Assistant Professor at Leiden University), Thilo Marauhn (Professor at Justus Liebig University Giessen), and Jessica Dorsey (Assistant Professor at Utrecht University) provided valuable comments to Rosa.