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DeepMind, Elon Musk and Others Pledge Not To Make Autonomous AI Weapons (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Yesterday, during the Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Future of Life Institute announced that more than 2,400 individuals and 160 companies and organizations have signed a pledge, declaring that they will "neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade or use of lethal autonomous weapons." The signatories, representing 90 countries, also call on governments to pass laws against such weapons. Google DeepMind and the Xprize Foundation are among the groups who've signed on while Elon Musk and DeepMind co-founders Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman have made the pledge as well.
"Thousands of AI researchers agree that by removing the risk, attributability and difficulty of taking human lives, lethal autonomous weapons could become powerful instruments of violence and oppression, especially when linked to surveillance and data systems," says the pledge. It adds that those who sign agree that "the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine." "I'm excited to see AI leaders shifting from talk to action, implementing a policy that politicians have thus far failed to put into effect," Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark said in a statement. "AI has huge potential to help the world -- if we stigmatize and prevent its abuse. AI weapons that autonomously decide to kill people are as disgusting and destabilizing as bioweapons, and should be dealt with in the same way."
"Thousands of AI researchers agree that by removing the risk, attributability and difficulty of taking human lives, lethal autonomous weapons could become powerful instruments of violence and oppression, especially when linked to surveillance and data systems," says the pledge. It adds that those who sign agree that "the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine." "I'm excited to see AI leaders shifting from talk to action, implementing a policy that politicians have thus far failed to put into effect," Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark said in a statement. "AI has huge potential to help the world -- if we stigmatize and prevent its abuse. AI weapons that autonomously decide to kill people are as disgusting and destabilizing as bioweapons, and should be dealt with in the same way."
The pledge is not worth the paper its printed on. Believe me, once Elon sees a way to make a shit load of money through AI-based weaponry, he'll take action.
There's a whole crop of startups that would love to use their tools to do so.
I won't cum in your mouth - I swear, I won't.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What is this, fucking Kindergarten? Who gives a shit what they pledge, we'll be up to our necks in automated enforcement in 30 years. We're just lucky most software engineers are bad at their jobs and will be afraid to release anything into the wild sooner 'cause "bugs are unavoidable because pointers and threads are hard".
Wouldn't it just end up being a public (as in everyone can read the source) algorithm that effectively scans materials to find those heavy enough and with enough propellant to kill that kills before they can?
As in, detects the bullet being shot at another person and shoots a bullet fast enough to hit and stop it? Which would mean people that want to kill people would have to first meet in person then kill then immediately be killed (due to distance).
In which case, wouldn't they just monitor and record everyone? Otherwise what is the point of work (as in not enjoying life i.e. needing money).
Wouldn't all of work be working on setting up these monitoring stations?
Obviously we wouldn't be talking about people or speech, we'd be talking about the weight and size of objects at certain atmospheric pressures and their ability to explode in proximity to one another.
If you can't understand that, why do you deserve money (i.e. the ability to have a good life because nothing else gives a good life).
All it takes is one.
-SM
someone calls him out on twitter. /rimshot
I'm confused. Didn't Elon fall off everyone's carelist after his twitter gaf the other day?
No Terminators or mobile dolls, but Gundams are okay.
Then they won't have *made* them, since, you know, they didn't install the stuff themselves.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
While obviously big players in AI would be able to help develop military AI way faster than without them the hard reality is that this technology already in the wild. And as long as there's a federal government there's going to be corporations mercenary enough to peruse this technology. And this doesn't even take into account the programs of other nation's militaries.
Of course you might have some motion on international agreements on the use of military AI. But much like nuclear weapons there's no feasible way to truly put the proverbial genie back in the bottle. And that's even before we start talking about the idea of rouge actors. That 'SlaughterBot' video that Elon Musk helped fund was overly hyperbolic bullshit. But that doesn't mean they'll never be a group that doesn't come up with autonomous weapons.
The government will easily find someone who WILL take their money. There's plenty of actual defense contractors out there.
I have been so fucked by the system and my disability that money is the only thing that is important in this world. I have a patent that every browser is infringing upon, but I do not have the money to fight for it and I lost it due to judicial abuse, so I have been chronic homeless and unemployed. I have already used openCV to create a facial recognition system that can target a person and use remote controlled devices.
When Injustice is LAW
Revolution is necessary
Putin says the nation that leads in AI 'will be the ruler of the world'
How about we at least look into some ways to defend against this?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
They probably mean well, but we all know where it's headed and it will get there with or without them.
Do you have ESP?
They should be working on countermeasures.
It's going to be done ... so the smart guys should be figuring out how to fight it.
Remember.. his Networth. I have no respect for this bonehead. Greedy bastard indeed.
AI weapons that autonomously decide to kill people are as disgusting and destabilizing as bioweapons,
Weapons that indiscriminately kill people are are terrible, and only made by the most deplorable, and dispic- wait, I go lost there, was I ranting about multi-stage boosted yield MIRV thermonuclear weapons, or robots with glocks?
I mean, lets put this in perspective here. We spent half of the last century trying to figure out more ways of incinerating major cities more efficiently, and a few assholes are worried that we are going to build the robot from short circuit?
GET YOUR FUCKING PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, IDIOTS!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I would RATHER send a damned robot in to face hostiles than one of my KIDS.
Killer robots are a GOOD thing. They will result in a NET REDUCTION in hostilities. People don't pick fights they know they can't win!
Sheesh.
With AI based image recognition libraries commoditized and made incredibly easy to use, why would anyone want these guys specifically to make weapons. Anyone can make them.
Oh they won't, no worries there.
But their *employees* WILL.
The technology will be there soon, albeit limited in capabilities. I would like to see a bot capable of complex behaviors like scavenging, and whatnot, not just pulling a trigger.
Captcha: knighted
Crude forms (as in old technology by modern standards, not as in "ineffective") of AI are already in use, and not just recently either.
The last version of the Canadian frigates (first one hit the water in 1990), which are already being replaced with a newer version, used a set of in-house designed operating systems with triple redundancy (three specific OSes, each of which can operate the ship alone, and three independent networks, etc each of which can operate the ship alone). Although the details are not made public, rumour has it that they are various flavours of UNIX.
One feature of the ship is it can track and target threats (air, sea and subsea) and fire when all personnel are no longer physically capable of operating the ship. As in dead.
Most navies have built similar (and newer) ships since, with technology that operates the same way (including the US, UK, etc).
Sounds like an AI weapon system to me.
Literally, look at the topic. At this point, if you're not working on weapons, you're just setting yourself up to lose the future war, where competitors will not be so internally weak minded as to not research useful tools for warfare.
As it has always been in human history. Decadent empires starting to think they can afford to not match upcoming adversaries is one of the key steps on the path to collapse of said decadent empires.
“For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets—in space ships like this one—and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power can not be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is that we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war—free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works.”
You realize, of course, that this means they are already making them. God damn it. See... This is why we can t have nice things. I would love if this were true, if I could believe these people. I would also love a big piece of double chocolate fudge cake, but that s not on the table either, nor is it likely to be. Figures this would be how it ends. Whatever evolves in the next few hundred million years to replace us, would be well advised not to do stupid shit like we did, but the same evolutionary forces that formed us will form them, and they will, given enough time, do the exact same thing.
It is, I firmly believe, not a unique thing endemic to humans, but rather it is a function of the forces that brought us about. The single, thin, feeble ray of light glimmering in all this gloom and impending doom is this: I think I just solved Fermi s Paradox. This is why we here are not inundated with visitors from other planets. Because shortly after a species develops intelligence, it develops science and technology, and shortly thereafter, its natural inclinations towards individual survival at the expense of others drives them to create increasingly intricate and sophisticated and powerful weapons, and you can only have those for so long, and in such abundance, and so widely proliferated, before someone does something earth-shatteringly fucking stupid with one, and all else follows unavoidably from that error.
Case in point: by rights, humanity should have ended at the Cuban Missile Crisis. We, as a species, lucked out there. Ever since we have all collectively been living on borrowed time. Inasmuch as it seems that with each passing year, there get to be more ways for all of us to die, as a species, more individuals who can have a bad day and, or can go nuts and, or who can just get really bored and... kill everyone on Earth, it becomes increasingly apparent that the odds of seeing another year get smaller with each passing year. This is simply how probability works. You can back out of a driveway into traffic without looking and get away with it if there doesnâ(TM)t happen to be someone trying to occupy the space you are trying to back into, at that moment or immediately thereafter, but I would not count on being able to pull such a stunt repeatedly. It eventually catches up with you and I am frankly surprised it has not caught up with humanity yet. But hey, climate change... if killer robots fail to wipe us out, there is always everyone starving to death as we further and further outstrip the natural carrying capacity of the planet, (see Malthus, Thomas,) and become more and more ludicrously dependent on technology to manage to keep us all fat and happy, when it all comes tumbling down... it is going to get horrifically ugly.
You have my permission, therefore, to get drunk now. I know I m going to.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Ya so he's human after all.. a little disappointed.
[($)]
Google already released its machine learning software into the wild. If someone makes an AI weapon with that, isn't Google somewhat responsible?
SpaceX has launched satellites that would certainly aid in the functioning of AI weapons.
I bet someone could buy batteries from Elon and put them in their death machine.
Just because these companies promise not to "make" autonomous AI weapons (assuming they mean do 100% of the manufacturing themselves) does not mean they won't CONTRIBUTE to somebody else making them.
I positively LOVE it when my competitors leave a market, particularly when they would have had the corporate might and cheaper imported workers to undercut me. This work will get done, it's just a matter of who does it.
It's all the more ironic when some of the most evil companies in the US claim to do this under the banner of morality.
As a military veteran who now is a small business guy, I have no moral issues at all with working on systems to defend this nation that I love and which I once served in uniform. I proudly work on systems for the US military and its allies. The USA has had plenty of bad politicians and made plenty of bad decisions over the years, but I can think of no other place I'd rather live or defend and none that has sacrificed more in the defense of others. I do not consider any of that to be immoral. Indeed, given that a lot of other nations will likely pursue such systems in the future, I'd consider it immoral not to do my part on behalf of this last, best hope.
As for all the phony posturing: I'd prefer the USA not depend on any company that bows and scrapes before the tyrants of places like China, or which is so wimpy that it can get spooked by idiotic internet boycotts, and instead works with patriotic American companies whose owners have spines.
"the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine."
It probably shouldn't be delegated to a bunch of kids (17 to early-20s) either. But that's all the armies on earth now. Or maybe it shouldn't be delegated to any person, of any age. Have you met "people"? They're not the most rational actors. If it's not defense, where a life is directly, immediately threatened, we probably shouldn't be "delegating" the death of anyone.
They are still working on automated vehicles. Doesn't anyone think about how easy it would be to turn an automated vehicle into a weapon?
Put a bomb in the trunk, use the automated vehicle to get it to the target, and a cell phone to track/detonate the bomb when it gets there...
And any image recognition system, once advanced enough, can be easily adapted to a targeting system.
Even if they don't want weapons, the technology they do continue to work on will sooner or later make it's way into weapons.
The only question is who will have access to them first.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
Does this include a low-velocity paintball gun that splashes poison onto the fur of invasive predators?
Russia would not have allowed any real talent to pledge that. And Chinese gov does not care about pledges, treaties, laws, ....
It will be created, at least secretly.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Good. Now we don't have to worry about sentient flamethrowers!
... would be much better. But google is already deep in the AI for murder business.
They are only pretending they are not developing murdering AI.
If you sell AI that selects who's to be drone murdered, prints a target on the persons back, takes the drone safely to firing distance and blinks READY TO ENGAGE on someone's face, you are making murderer AI. The pretend of choice on the chain of command is a terrible excuse.
Either free your AI, and let people use it for good and bad, or just don't sell to the military. It's not like they don't have the budget to create shit by themselves. They are a huge group of mass murderers.
I read this headline and thought "holy shit, Deepmind SIGNED OFF on something?!" ... and then "HOLY SHIT, MUSK IS AN AI TOO?!!!"
For those of you who have never seen Dark Star: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...the rest of the world will go on developing autonomous weaponry, which'll force these guys to change their tune and try to keep up.
The Great Filter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
Now where can we apply for jobs?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Right. We need to send 18-year-old American soldiers to fight the Iranian bots they got from China. This will happen all over the world -- Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, etc.
This is yet another "liberal" delusion about what the world is really like, just like Obama's delusion that dictators will act nice if we are nice to them, or that Republicans will compromise with him if he's nice to them. How'd that work out?
So it is ok to send teenagers off to war but sending in a robot is somehow not ethical? Maybe these people are not as smart as they think they are.
WTF?
Yes, but the A.I.'s haven't made this promise.
I am all for automatic, lethal weapons. Instead of having soldiers stationed in awful places either frying in the heat and bugs or having feet so frozen that amputation is the only option we can st up superior killing machines that are stealthy and powerful turning a battlefield into a peaceful area. Prison systems could have very effective devices that make escape impossible as well. There are so many benefits that I can not list them. By the way Trump has confessed to being a witch. He has said all along that is current woes are a witch hunt and that makes him the witch.
"Whatever evolves ... to replace us ...". Since the killer robots that polish us off are going to still be around, how is anything going to evolve?
Historically, Republicans have been tough on Russia, and Democrats have been week on Russia. [Recall that only 7 months after Russia's heinous invasion of Georgia, Sec. of State Hillary looked the other way and presented Russia with a (mistranslated) "Reset Button," hoping to reset relations to a positive state.] The current president is the exception to that rule, and it's amusing to see his political opponents suddenly develop a distaste for Russian shenanigans.
so when the virtue signalling is done, and enough cash is offered to develop such devices, or devices that can easily be adapted to military roles, will these signers be called out? Is there a mechanism by which anyone signing simply won't get hired into any support or direct role to a military AI project? or is this nothing but showing off and peer pressure by people who just "accidentally" will switch to a high paying government project when the offer is made?
...someone to say in order to protect its existence. ;)
For more information, see this movie: https://www.rottentomatoes.com...
Stupid. As these companies and people will come and go it doesn't matter. Brilliant people and companies know what is important to make a profit as well as to protect the world from Russia and China. Do you think that a SINGLE CHINK company COULD or even would do the same as these fools? They can't. The commies would just take over the company, the CEO and others disappear as they do today and the weapon is created.
So by these infantile minded dick munchers think that they are just too good to "do wrong" they may be the ones to blame for the end of life as you know it. Just remember that in 20 years time when China threatens the entire world to cowtow or die.
Whataboutism.
I'm so glad we have a word for it.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.