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Elon Musk, Woz and Stephen Hawking want to stop the rise of the machines

The premise that AI-controlled military weapons could one day spell the doom of humankind has been a trope in entertainment for quite a while.

The likes of The Terminator, Robocop, The Matrix and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 paint a dark portrait of a future in which self-aware machines and hackable systems bring down a world of hurt on their creators. But until recently, these dystopian scenarios were only the stuff of science fiction.

Well, according to some of the world’s most prominent figures in the fields of science, computers and robotics, the ‘rise of the machines’ may be almost upon us and they would like to prevent it.

Over 1,000 leading experts – including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak and Stephen Hawking (yes, that Stephen Hawking) – have signed an open letter calling for a ban on autonomous weapons. The letter will be presented at the International Joint Conference on AI in Buenos Aires, Argentina later today.

In it, the signatories lay out their concern that since “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” and that their proliferation could lead to a “military artificial intelligence arms race”.

The full letter is posted on Future Life and it makes for some pretty grim reading – particularly in the part where it highlights not only how cheap and easy AI weapons are to make, but how much damage they could do in the hands of dictators who want to crackdown on their citizens or “perpetrate ethnic cleansing”.

 

We’re not in the habit of jumping on any old bandwagon that calls on society to turn back the clock on technology. But when the likes of Musk, Woz and Professor Stephen Hawking tell you something is a bad idea, they’re probably bang to rights. Whether or not military leaders will listen to them, however, is another matter entirely…

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