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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: 4, Insightful) by bziman on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:32AM
There are definitely going to be autonomous killing machines. You know why? Because it will mean big profits for Lockheed, Raytheon, CACI, etc. It will be positioned as a "cost saving" measure, so that the military doesn't have to pay real soldiers. But it's just the next phase of extracting more money from the public and transferring it to the ruling class. Of course, that will require more useless imperialist wars (well, useless in terms of "defending America" and "fighting for freedom" - it'll be great, for breeding fear and hate, so we have an enemy that we have to spend money arming ourselves against). And the best thing about it, is if the People refuse to stand for it, all this new technology will rapidly find its way into "law enforcement" departments, to deal with the growing insurrection. Either way, PROFITS!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:45AM
Think of the children!
10000 lives were obliterated is a few seconds because of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_%281917%29 [wikipedia.org]
Now we've got robots, cruise missiles, all perfectly clean. Your boys can grow up safely knowing they'll never PTSDed or injured on a battlefield, and only Bad Bad Evil Guys get killed.