Killer robots stunned Ilona Musk and even more than a hundred specialists
Autonomous weapons or autonomous weapons systems (AWS), military experts call the types of weapons that do everything themselves: both find the target and perform the task without human intervention. One of the most famous, so far only from sci-fi films and AWS books, are the so-called "Robots the killers".
Ilon Musk and over a hundred other robotics experts write in the open UN warning letter to the deadly threat from killer robots. Musk, Mustafa Suleiman, the creator of AI-company DeepMind Technologies, which is now owned by Google, and 114 experts from 26 countries warn the UN that an AWS arms race can open a Pandora’s box that can cause humanity to be hard to predict and cause very great harm. They demand to ban the development and implementation of autonomous weapons systems.
All signatories are well versed in the issue, because they work in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). They are confident that the entry into the armament of the armies of the developed countries of robots-killers will have the same significance for military affairs as the invention of gunpowder and nuclear weapons, which they call the first and second revolution in military affairs. AWS, they believe, will be the third revolution.
“After being brought to a high level, autonomous weapons systems will lead military conflicts to a degree of scope that humankind has not yet seen,” says a collective letter. - Moreover, it will happen with great speed. AWS can become a weapon of terror, a weapon that despots and terrorists will use against civilians ... ”
The authors of the letter warn about a hypothetical as yet weapon that can kill people without human intervention. The day is close when it will become a harsh reality from the category of fiction and will force you to look for answers to many complex questions, ranging from the safe management of such systems to moral and ethical problems caused by “iron” cruelty and unpredictability of deadly machines.
Musk, with supporters who share his position on the danger of AWS for humanity, emphasizes that there is no time for reflection and discussion, and that it is necessary to act immediately. “We have very little time,” they write to the UN. “Once the Pandora’s box opens, it will be very difficult to close it.”
The time for writing an open letter was not chosen randomly. The experts wanted to coincide with the beginning of work in Melbourne of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). It was supposed to open on Monday 21 August, but the UN decided to move it to November.
At the end of an open letter, Ilon Mask and his colleagues call on the UN to redouble their efforts to create a strategy by November to protect the planet from killer robots.
Previously, Musk himself warned about the dangers of works on artificial intelligence as such, since the systems based on it could get out of control of a person. At the same time, Tesla cars with electric motors already drive on the roads of the United States in unmanned mode, which is not without incident.
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