Meaningful human control of drones: exploring human–machine teaming, informed by four different ethical perspectives

A human-centric approach to the design and deployment of AI systems aims to support and augment human capabilities. This sounds worthwhile indeed. But what could this look like in a military context? We explored a human-centric approach to the design and deployment of highly autonomous, unarmed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), or drone, and an associated Decision Support System (DSS), for the drone’s operator. We explore how Human–Machine Teaming, through such a DSS, can promote Meaningful Human Control of the drone. We use four different ethical perspectives—utilitarianism, deontology, relational ethics and virtue ethics—to discuss different ways to design and deploy the drones and the DSS. Our aim is to explore ways to support and augment the operators’ capabilities.