20 May 2026 Wednesday / 17:20-18:50 / C.106

Lecture by Aurél Sári (University of Exeter, CIAS)

On 20 May, Prof. Aurél Sári, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Exeter and Senior Research Fellow at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS), gave a presentation at IR TALKS entitled ‘AI and War: What Does the Law Say?’. The talk was moderated by Associate Professor Tamás Hoffmann (Department of International Relations, Corvinus University of Budapest).

Prof. Sári first gave a brief introduction of the basic principles of the law of armed conflicts (LOAC), focusing on the importance of distinction of civilian and military objectives, target verification and proportionality, then addressed the fundamental questions of the application of artificial intelligence in warfare, primarily the issue of autonomous weapons and target selection. Prof. Sári emphasized that the rapidly accelerating development and adoption of AI in warfare necessitates the creation of new legal norms, which are somewhat permissive towards the adoption of these systems if they demonstrably lower the potential incidence of civilian harm.

The lecture was followed by an extensive Q & A session, during which the audience, that included BA, MA, and PhD students and several university lecturers, posed several questions ranging from the application of current targeting rules to AI systems to the legality of adoption of artificial intelligence during the Gaza conflict and the current Iranian crisis.

IR TALKS is a series of guest and roundtable talks organised by the Department of International Relations at Corvinus University to make sense of the world we live in at a time of turbulent international politics.