Norway too is a long-standing party to the Additional Protocol II [sic!] and Article 36 of course. Legal reviews are essential to ensuring compliance with international law as has been pointed out by so many and we very much support fleshing out what considerations the legal review should comprise in this specific case of LAWS. And our impression is that there is very much support for this in this room, and based on the understanding, of course, that the work on legal reviews will not replace our work to formulate the limits and regulations that apply to LAWS. We believe it would be useful for this GGE to give some indications on the thresholds for when modifications of [AWS] would require renewed reviews in furtherance of the conclusions on this point in 2018. And in the case of LAWS, this is particularly salient since programming changes can have significant impact on the functioning of the system. And like the Philippines and others, we believe a particular emphasis should be put on determining whether the weapon systems are sufficiently understandable, explainable, predictable and reliable in the intended context of use, which are considerations that gain particular relevance when AI and self-learning are involved. And we join the many who have called for the GGE to take a further step and encourage voluntary exchanges of best practice and review results rather than stating that it could be beneficial like we did in 2019.
Statement by Norway under agenda item 5, topic 5 (9 March 2023, transcript)
