Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Steve Wozniak call for ban on autonomous weapons & military AI

Credit: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems/Akamai Technologies

An open letter was presented at the opening of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) on 28 July. It warns of the dangers inherent in autonomous weapons & military artificial intelligence (AI). Signatories included Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Steve Wozniak & 1,000 artificial intelligence researchers. Read it at:

http://futureoflife.org/AI/open_letter_autonomous_weapons

Now the number of signatories has expanded to over 16,000:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/30/opposition-autonomous-warfare-artificial-intelliegence / Artificial intelligence community comes together in unprecedented numbers to call for a ban on AI-controlled weaponry open letter artificial intelligence AI researchers urging ban offensive autonomous weapons reached 16,000 signatories signed by more than 15,000 people in the three days released letter AI technology reached a point deployment autonomous weapons practically legal legally feasible within years initially signed Tesla’s Elon Musk Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis professor Stephen Hawking over 2,000 experts another 14,000 individuals outside the AI community warns: stakes are high autonomous weapons described third revolution in warfare after gunpowder nuclear arms endpoint technological trajectory autonomous weapons become Kalashnikovs of tomorrow key question humanity start global AI arms race prevent it from starting Toby Walsh AI professor University of New South Wales Australia launched in Buenos Aires momentum gathered entirely through word of mouth huge support means universal AI community issues black and white arguments both sides opinion thousands of colleagues balance of arguments favours a ban before next arms race arguments against a ban robots more precise able minimise civilian casualties risk human lives robots can take their place fear of an arms race weapons falling into the hands of terrorist organisations impetus for a ban hypothetical robots available today capabilities build autonomous weapons Google autonomous car high level goal make a plan how to achieve that goal sense computer vision radar executing that plan identify when the plan breaks find a new plan start executing take evasive action identify when it has reached goal essentially the capabilities build an autonomous weapon system find locate track target terrorists means or capabilities build a Google-like car technology is smaller cheaper better computing killer robots fear most small ones swarms of tens or hundreds of robots hard to defend against such an opponent small robots cheap easy to replicate AIs explicit go-ahead to murder ethical challenges ahead challenging important ethical decisions AI life or death decision car on the wrong side of the road UN conference in Geneva future of weaponry killer robots ban development of autonomous weapons Campaign to Stop Killer Robots /