Principles and Framework for the Operationalisation of Meaningful Human Control over Autonomous Systems

TL;DR

This paper develops principles and a universal framework to operationalize meaningful human control over autonomous systems, aiming to enhance safety, accountability, and ethical operation across diverse domains.

Contribution

It introduces a set of operational principles and a generic, domain-agnostic framework for implementing and evaluating meaningful human control in autonomous systems.

Findings

Framework dissects system components and agents for MHC implementation

Principles provide tangible guidelines for researchers and practitioners

Framework applicable across various technological domains

Abstract

This paper proposes an alignment for the operationalisation of Meaningful Human Control (MHC) for autonomous systems by proposing operational principles for MHC and introducing a generic framework for its application. With a plethora of different seemingly diverging expansions for use of MHC in practice, this work aims to bring alignment and convergence use in practice. The increasing integration of autonomous systems in various domains emphasises a critical need to maintain human control to ensure responsible safety, accountability, and ethical operation of these systems. The concept of MHC offers an ideal concept for the design and evaluation of human control over autonomous systems, while considering human and technology capabilities. Through analysis of existing literature and investigation across various domains and related concepts, principles for the operationalisation of MHC are set out to provide tangible guidelines for researchers and practitioners aiming to implement MHC in their systems. The proposed framework dissects generic components of systems and their subsystems aligned with different agents, stakeholders and processes at different levels of proximity to an autonomous technology. The framework is domain-agnostic, emphasizing the universal applicability of the MHC principles irrespective of the technological context, paving the way for safer and more responsible autonomous systems.