Affiliated Fellows: Patrick McGee
Tactical Recordkeeping is a project analyzing what archival perspectives on trustworthiness, and in particular authenticity and reliability, bring to the analysis of information generated by or about AI’s uses in warfare. How might archival perspectives inform the treatment of such information as legal evidence in international jurisprudence? Initially, this is a three-phase project associated with the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES Project), consisting of an annotated bibliography, a reading group on Law/Evidence/Archives, and a policy paper.
I. Artificial Intelligence, Warfare, and Evidence in International Contexts
The case of South Africa v. Israel in the International Criminal Court is the first case in an international court in which the specter of artificial intelligence has been raised as evidence of war crimes. As a part of the InterPARES Trust AI cohort, and its Creation Working Group in particular, the CUNY Archival Technologies Lab is compiling literature on the precedents and theories informing the adjudication of military use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomous weapons. These writings are collected as a preliminary step towards further research regarding the application of archival theories of trustworthiness to the issue of AI and warfare in international contexts. There is a great need for scholarship on how material evidence of military AI is created, processed and understood, and archival and information scholars might start to answer questions of:
- Authenticity and verification of evidence of military AI
- Data ethics and critical legal studies
- Diplomatics and legal theories of accountability
- Use of AI in the processing of evidence
II. Law / Evidence / Archives Reading Group
The Law / Evidence / Archives reading group will meet weekly for fifteen weeks from January to May 2025 to discuss selected readings on records as evidence, particularly in relation to trustworthiness and authority in changing technological and legal contexts.
The reading group is part of the Tactical Recordkeeping project at the Archival Technologies Lab, City University of New York, which is examining artificial intelligence, warfare, and evidence in international jurisprudence, in affiliation with the InterPARES Trust AI (I Trust AI) research program.
Readings will be drawn from Henry A. Redwood’s The Archival Politics of International Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Katherine Biber et al. (eds.), Law’s Documents: Authority, Materiality, Aesthetics(Routledge, 2022), and a selection of peer reviewed articles. All texts will be provided.
To participate, please email [email protected] committing to weekly attendance and leading a discussion. Participation will be capped at 15 people. Meetings will be held on Mondays at 1pm EST.
