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posted by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-skynet-is-falling dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:08AM

    by anubi (2828) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:08AM (#214638) Journal

    I do not think anyone could ban such a thing any more than they can ban alcohol, weed, or music sharing.

    This is one of those things that come in the mixed bag of rewards resulting from advancement of technology.

    If we do not use it, the "bad guy" will.

    No use deliberately being a sheep and trusting the wolf won't use his teeth.

    Won't work, fellas. Strength is one's ability to defend himself.

    When one cannot defend themselves, they have to "negotiate" and accept whatever sanctions are imposed on them.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:43AM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:43AM (#214671)

    Won't work, fellas. Strength is one's ability to defend himself.

    Can you really imagine anyone other than the U.S. being the first to roll out this technology?

    Saying "we had to deploy fully autonomous discretionary killdrones in order to counter guys with AK-47s" does not fit within your use case.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:12AM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:12AM (#214791)

      > Can you really imagine anyone other than the U.S. being the first to roll out this technology?

      Well, most of the mechanical stuff is done - they have tanks and planes and stuff already. Coding is cheap to implement on the scale of military expenditure. High-end servers and supercomputers are available anywhere e.g. China has the fastest supercomputer in the world (don't know whether you would run the control software externally and beam it in or run it internally). Why would US be the first?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:18PM (#214941)

        Why would US be the first?

        Because shitting on the US is how you get up-modded here. Doesn't matter the topic, the US is the only nation capable of doing these things. The Russians and Chinese don't spy on people, particularly their own. They clearly aren't advanced enough to do this kind of stuff. Don't you know that all drones are built and flown by the US? Even though a DIY'er can cobble something together, I'm sure the Israelis can't do anything like that.

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:01AM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:01AM (#214699)

    Most countries have completely banned the use of landmines.

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    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:31AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:31AM (#214758) Journal

      There is an international convention against "victim initiated" weapons, what otherwise are called "booby-traps" . Things like land mines do not know what they are attacking, and so fail the test of "discrimination" required under the laws of armed conflict.