On February 15 and 16, 2023, the Netherlands, co-hosting with South Korea, convened the first Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) summit at the World Forum in The Hague. The gathering brought together governments, militaries, industry, academia, and civil society to discuss how AI should be developed and used responsibly in defense, and it ended with a joint Call to Action.
The Call to Action was endorsed by dozens of states. According to the Dutch government, the participating countries underlined “the need to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda” and to promote initiatives that advance responsible development, deployment, and use of military AI. The summit also launched a Global Commission on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain to help define military AI and clarify how it can be governed.
REAIM was significant as the first dedicated multilateral forum focused specifically on AI in defense rather than on autonomous weapons alone. It deliberately framed the issue broadly, covering everything from logistics and intelligence analysis to decision support, not just weapons that select and engage targets. The same venue served as the launch point for the US-led Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy. A second REAIM summit followed in Seoul in 2024.
For a general reader, REAIM matters because it established a recurring, government-level venue where the norms for military AI are negotiated in public. The practices it promotes, including human accountability and rigorous testing, increasingly shape how both governments and their technology suppliers approach high-stakes AI.