Musk, Hawking Warn of ‘Inevitable’ Killer Robot Arms Race

by  Michael Rundle,  Wired.co.uk

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and 1,000 academics, researchers, and public figures have called for a ban on autonomous weapons.

In an open letter presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Buenos Aries, the Future of Life Institute signatories warned “starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea.” Joining Professor Hawking and SpaceX founder Elon Musk below the letter are Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, linguist Noam Chomsky, cofounder of Sky Jaan Tallinn and Stephen Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s arms division.

The letter says AI could benefit humanity in many ways, but the technological trajectory is obvious. The letter defines autonomous weapons as those that “select and engage targets without human intervention.” Autonomous weapons would be ideal for assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations, and selectively killing a particular ethnic group, the letter notes.

“We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity,” the letter says. The United Kingdom says it is not developing lethal AI, but the potential to build such weapons already exists and is developing fast. The U.S. military recently commissioned a report examining the future of warfare, which predicts “swarms of robots” will be ubiquitous by 2050.  Read the report.