ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1536667
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Human-Autonomous Interactions: Agency, Awareness, and Ethical ImplicationsView all 3 articles
Capturing the Design Space of Meaningful Human Control in Military Systems using Repertory Grids
Provisionally accepted
- 1Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 2University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia
- 3Department of Defence Science and Technology, Australian Government, Edinburgh, Australia
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This study explores the design space of Meaningful Human Control (MHC) for military AI systems using the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) to capture expert perspectives across disciplines. By interviewing twelve experts from fields such as military, engineering, philosophy, and human factors, we identified key constructs related to autonomy, moral sensitivity, destructiveness, and human-machine interaction. The findings reveal both consensus and variation in experts' understanding of MHC, highlighting challenges in interdisciplinary alignment. The study identifies key variables for MHC and uses them to create a design map that guides system designers in integrating MHC concepts into AI applications. By establishing a shared vocabulary and improved elicitation methods, we aim at facilitating future discussions and research aimed at establishing and maintaining MHC.
Keywords: Meaningful human control, responsible ai, Repertory grids, AI in Defense, autonomous weapon systems
Received: 29 Nov 2024; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 van Diggelen, Boshuijzen-van Burken and Vince. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jurriaan van Diggelen, Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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