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Over 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and leading researchers have signed an open letter warning of a "military artificial intelligence arms race" and calling for a ban on "offensive autonomous weapons".
The letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was signed by Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis and professor Stephen Hawking along with 1,000 AI and robotics researchers.
The letter states: "AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms."
So, spell it out for me, Einstein, are we looking at a Terminator future or a Matrix future?
While the latest open letter is concerned specifically with allowing lethal machines to kill without human intervention, several big names in the tech world have offered words of caution of the subject of machine intelligence in recent times. Earlier this year Microsoft's Bill Gates said he was "concerned about super intelligence," while last May physicist Stephen Hawking voiced questions over whether artificial intelligence could be controlled in the long-term. Several weeks ago a video surfaced of a drone that appeared to have been equipped to carry and fire a handgun.
takyon: Counterpoint - Musk, Hawking, Woz: Ban KILLER ROBOTS before WE ALL DIE
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:15AM
For many thousands of years human frailty and mortality have kept short the collective intelligence and conscious. Now we have a way to create our successors which would be free of these limitations and true-to-form we are fearful for our small, pathetic, contemporary existence.
Marvel at the hypocritical, nonsensical, 'mind' of man.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:34PM
I'd like to point out that your equivalent around year 1800 were wasting ink proclaiming that technology would have freed humanity from work. Could it? sure! does it? nope!
Around 1990 Internet would have made information flow without barriers. Could it? sure! does it? nope!
The capabilities of AI to provide better successors of mankind are totally irrelevant because that's not what people are developing it for. Moreover, too many people think that "alive" means "pass the Turing test", instead of "being an instance of a process called life, defined by growth, multiplication, adaptation, resilience and whatever self awareness is". Wasting time on emulating life instead of let us bots find our way.
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