ARLINGTON, Va. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is conducting a program of research into evaluating the ability of autonomous weapons systems to follow human-like ethical norms.

Using a variety of approaches, selected performers in the Autonomy Standards and Ideals with Military Operational Values (ASIMOV) program will work with DARPA teams to develop benchmarks to objectively and quantitatively measure the ethical difficulty of future autonomy use cases and readiness of autonomous systems to perform in those use cases within the context of military operational values.

The DARPA announcement of the program asserts that "ASIMOV is not developing autonomous systems or algorithms for autonomous systems" but is intending to "meaningfully evaluate the ethical difficulty of specific military scenarios and the ability of autonomous systems to perform ethically within those scenarios."

The announcement names the seven participants as CoVar, LLC; Kitware, Inc.; Lockheed Martin; RTX Technology Research Center; SAAB, Inc.; Systems & Technology Research, LLC; and the University of New South Wales.

The ASIMOV program will strive to create the ethical autonomy common language to enable the Developmental Testing/Operational Testing (DT/OT) community to meaningfully evaluate the ethical difficulty of specific military scenarios and the ability of autonomous systems to perform ethically within those scenarios. ASIMOV participants will develop prototype generative modeling environments to rapidly explore scenario iterations and variability across a spectrum of increasing ethical difficulties.

The endgame, according to DARPA: ASIMOV will build the foundation for defining the benchmark by which future autonomous systems may be gauged. DARPA officials say that the ASIMOV program will include an ethical, legal, and societal implications group to advise performers and provide guidance throughout the program.

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