Killer Robots Would Be 'Dangerously Destabilizing' Force in the World, Tech Leaders Warn (washingtonpost.com)

Thousands of artificial intelligence experts are calling on governments to take preemptive action before it's too late. The list is extensive and includes some of the most influential names in the overlapping worlds of technology, science and academia. From a report: Among them are billionaire inventor and OpenAI founder Elon Musk, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, artificial intelligence researcher Stuart Russell, as well as the three founders of Google DeepMind -- the company's premier machine learning research group. In total, more than 160 organizations and 2,460 individuals from 90 countries promised this week to not participate in or support the development and use of lethal autonomous weapons. The pledge says artificial intelligence is expected to play an increasing role in military systems and calls upon governments and politicians to introduce laws regulating such weapons "to create a future with strong international norms."

"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," the pledge says. "Moreover, lethal autonomous weapons have characteristics quite different from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the unilateral actions of a single group could too easily spark an arms race that the international community lacks the technical tools and global governance systems to manage," the pledge adds.

Comments

If it can be done, it will be done

[Ol Olsoc]

"Thousands of artificial intelligence experts are calling on governments to take preemptive action before it's too late."

It is too late.

The only thing that will stop bad robot with a gun

[olsmeister]

Is a good robot with a gun. If you take the guns away from the good robots, then only the bad robots will have the guns.

Ultimately futile

[OpenSourced]

You could rewrite that 70 years in the past and substituting "Killer Robots" by "Nuclear weapons", and make the same arguments, and even some arguments being proven right in hindsight.

But technology will mature when it's ready to do so, and no amount of hand-wringing will change that. And anyway, if I they want to choose a dangerous tech to get all anxious about, hands down it should be "genetically engineered viri" rather than "killer robots". At least with a robot you can shoot back.

Doom and gloom

[taustin]

Warnings about military and political catastrophe by people who know nothing about the military, or politics, and automatically assume that anyone who does must be evil and stupid.

How could we possibly survive with the infinite wisdom of Silicon Valley! Just ask them.

In other words, it's a day that ends in "y."

This is a complete non-story. There's no content. They're not wrong, so much, as they have nothing to say at all.

Killer Robots Will Be 'Dangerously Destabilizing'

[rsilvergun]

FTFY.

Seriously, the rich are already thinking about a post capitalist society where the working class doesn't factor in. Automated weapons are the way to go. You keep a few engineers on staff to monitor them and pay the engineers well. Unlike the captains of your private military they lack the ambition and charisma to overthrow you.

Meanwhile the rest of us will just be screwed. Think living like the American Indians on the res except without the casinos. If you want to prevent that now's the time. Start demanding a decent quality of life for everyone. Establish it as a basic human right. Or cast your eyes to the reservations circa the 1900s because that's your future. Me? I'm 40 and come from a short lived family. I'll be long gone.