Dronomation

Consumer Drones and Artificial ‚Intelligence‘ in War Zones

December 3, 2024, AdBK Munich and online, 9.30–17.00

The one-day hybrid con­fer­ence looks to present con­tem­po­rary cri­tiques of drone-tech­nolo­gies, their scop­ic regimes and increas­ing reliance on so-called AI sys­tems. Instead of fetishis­ing the pre­sumed auton­o­my of these weapons, this con­fer­ence looks at the logis­tic depen­den­cies, the oper­a­tional chains of humans, and the infra­struc­tur­al lay­ers that enable them; as well as their rela­tion to cin­e­mat­ic tech­nolo­gies.

We cur­rent­ly observe a trend towards the increas­ing mass use con­sumer-off-the-shelf drones in war the­atres. This trend includes a shift from expen­sive, large, long-dis­tance, remote con­trolled, mil­i­tary drones towards inex­pes­sive, small, and close­ly-remote civil­ian drones which were adapt­ed for recon­nais­sance and grenade drops. First-per­son-view-drones today even serve as replace­ment for bal­lis­tic artillery.

A sec­ond Dronomation trend is the bureau­cra­ti­za­tion and accel­er­at­ing automa­tion of killing in war zones. In this sce­nario drones pro­duce visu­al and geospa­tial data for data­bas­es and machine learn­ing pro­cess­ing. Automation appears increas­ing­ly as an excuse for a per­mis­sive pol­i­cy of tar­get­ing, where respon­s­abil­i­ty is deferred to a seem­ing­ly objec­tive machine.

Numerous artis­tic works have inves­ti­gat­ed drones in the past, but the devel­op­ments of the recent mil­i­tary con­flicts, as well as the growth of drone use in the con­sumer area, demon­strate the need for an update.

Program

Intro, Welcome, Moderation: Francis Hunger, Hito Steyerl

Consumer off the shelf drones

Dani Ploeger (DE)

Olga Danylyuk (UA)

Francis Hunger (DE): Consumer off the shelf drones

Response

Break

Algorithmic Warfare and Drones

Svitlana Matviyenko (CAN): Ukraine and Algorithmic Drone Warfare

Lucy Suchman (UK): Algorithmic war­fare and the rein­ven­tion of accu­ra­cy

Elke Schwarz (UK): Crimes of Dispassion – Autonomous Weapons and the Moral Challenge of Systematic Killing

Response