Hawking, Musk, Wozniak and 1,000 other thought-leaders seek to end the impending military AI arms race

With concern of robots and vehicles being turned into autonomous weapons, scientific and technological gurus Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Noam Chomsky, and Steve Wozniak, along with 1,000 others, have signed an open letter to the government working to ban them.

A few weeks back, Musk was recognized as one of the few technological leaders who fought to keep artificial intelligence “beneficial” to society. He worked with The Future of Life Institute to fund 37 projects at $10 million dedicated to keeping AI under positive human control. Musk pointed out his skepticism previously saying that AI is potentially “more dangerous than nukes”; now, he works to fully ban it.

Hawking also previously warned humans of AI, but much more positively than Musk; he likened artificial intelligence as “our biggest existential threat.”

Nevertheless, the tech experts signed a letter that works to ban robots and vehicles as they could be turned into autonomous weapons that may eventually turn over and kill humans. Conversely, it states that drones and cruise missiles are okay because ultimately, humans have control over them.

A segment of the letter reads:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems 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.

The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.

It summarizes that artificial intelligence is more detrimental to humans than it is beneficial. The letter aims to promote awareness so that an arms race never has the chance to happen. Once AI is created and working, it decides whom and what it attacks. After that, there really is no turning back.

Source: Ars Technica